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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PUBLICATIONS 

IN 

PHILOSOPHY 

Vol. 2, No. 6, pp. 187-290 October 3, 1921 


AN ANALYSIS OF CERTAIN THEORIES 

OF TRUTH 


BY 

GEORGE BOAS 


UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS 
BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA 

‘f 'i v foM? 


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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PUBLICATIONS 

IN 

PHILOSOPHY 

Vol. 2, No. 6, pp. 187-290 October 3, 1921 


AN ANALYSIS OF CERTAIN THEORIES 
OF TRUTH 


BY 

GEORGE BOAS 


CONTENTS page 

Prefatory Note. 187 

Characteristics of a Desirable Theory of Truth. 189 

Subjective Theories of Truth... 190 

(a) Logical Hedonism..... 190 

(&) Truth as the Irresistible.. 195 

Relational Theories of Truth....... 216 

(a) The Correspondence Theory. 216 

( b ) Truth as Formal Consistency..... 226 

( c ) Coherence in a “Significant Whole’’. 237 

Voluntaristic Theories of Truth. 257 


PREFATORY NOTE 

The man who would make a study of any philosophic problem 
encounters at the outset of his work difficulties which seem almost 
insuperable. He finds that his problem, far from being the 
simply definable discipline which first appealed to him, is the 
generator of a series of other problems almost without limit. He 
finds, too, that those ideas whose novelty was so thoroughly satis¬ 
fying are after all neither his own nor the better exposition of 
another’s. 

Besides these difficulties', inherent in philosophic research, 
there are scruples of taste to hamper one’s free expression. One 
hesitates, for instance, to chime in with the facile lyricism that 
is so prominent a part of our contemporary literature. The most 
objective problems today seem to be often a vehicle of personal 
feeling. One cannot help contrasting this with the method of 
Plato, of Aquinas, of Spinoza, a method illuminative of a per¬ 
sonality the more forceful for being so self-repressive. And 
then again, one hesitates to strike that other note, perhaps a 
concomitant of lyricism, the note of belligerence. Active polemic 













188 University of California Publications in Philosophy. IT°1.2 


is to be sure a sign of healthy vigor. But reading our philosophic 
journals inspires the thought that perhaps we are too interested 
in healthy vigor to be concerned with philosophy. 

Be that as it may, this essay is written with a full, perhaps 
an exaggerated, consciousness of these difficulties. The fertility 
of the problem has been frustrated constantly lest what is after 
all only an essay turn into a set of books. In order to indicate 
that certain implications have not been omitted through ignor¬ 
ance, possible digressions or continuations have been noted in 
the composition. It is hoped that unity has not been gained at 
the expense of thoroughness. 

Again, wherever it was discovered that any views in this essay 
had been anticipated by other writers, references were given to 
their works, usually with full quotations, even in those cases 
where the results were attained independently. Such quotations 
will be found in the notes in almost all cases, for it seemed best, 
for the sake of clearness, to reserve the body of the essay, none 
too clear in any event it is feared, for the running argument 
itself. When no reference is given, it means not that the idea is 
supposed to be original, but that its author has not been found. 

Working upon the assumption that a philosopher prefers 
theories which are consistent to theories which are self-contra¬ 
dictory, commonplace notions of truth have been taken as sug¬ 
gestions of theories, and an attempt has been made to develop in 
each case a consistent statement rather than to engage in lengthy 
discussions of textual interpretation. This may not be wholly 
justifiable. But surely the degeneration of purely theoretical 
essays into historical treatises is no more justifiable. No harm 
can be done so long as these men of straw are not incorporated 
in historical thinkers. The cavalier manner, moreover, in which 
Aristotle, Descartes, the “ Mystics/ ’ the Stoics, have been men¬ 
tioned, as if their works were open to no misunderstanding, must 
not deceive a possible reader. For this essay’s concern with 
Aristotle, for instance, is only with a probable supporter of a 
specific theory of truth in which it is interested. He is men¬ 
tioned merely for the sake of “scholarship.” 

Berkeley, California. George Boas. 

Transmitted April 28, 1917. 


LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
RECEIVED 

OCT 111921 

DOCUMENTS D.ViSION 






1921] Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth. 189 


CHARACTERISTICS OF A DESIRABLE THEORY 
OF TRUTH 

Theories of truth differ from almost all other theories in that 
they form part of their own subject matter. A theory of 
thermodynamics is not a part of thermodynamics; a theory of 
the origin of species is not itself part of the origin of species; 
even a theory of ethics need not be considered morality; but a 
theory of truth which can not be tested by the criteria it estab¬ 
lishes must perforce be at fault to that extent. Nor can the 
theorist hope for escape by way of a theory of types; even 
propositions of higher types are true or false, and each step 
higher leads but deeper into the tangle. So that whatever the 
definition of “truth” may be which is finally established, that 
definition must apply as rigorously to the truth of the definition 
as to the truth of any other proposition. In other words it 
must be self-critical. 

Theories of truth, moreover, must satisfy three other con¬ 
ditions before they can be accepted. In the first place a theory 
of truth had best not presuppose any specific metaphysics, 
psychology, nor epistemology. In the interests of the search, it 
is true, many psychological and epistemological investigations 
may have to be carried on, but it is important that they be not 
taken for granted at the outset. Again, whatever theory may 
result will no doubt give rise to a very decided metaphysical 
system; but since that system must itself be a case of truth or 
falsity, it is wiser to let it be justified by a theory of truth than 
to let a theory of truth be justified by it. We must, however, 
presuppose ordinary logic—whatever ordinary logic may be— 
since after all a theory of truth must be reasoned and will be 
criticised willy-nilly by the laws of reasoning. 

In the second place a theory of truth must account for the 
phenomenon of falsity. It is folly to define a false proposition 
as any proposition which is not true, since one logic at least, 


190 University of California Publications in Philosophy. IT°1. 2 


Mr. Russell’s, maintains that there is a third something which is 
meaningless. This contention must either be refuted or accepted, 
and if accepted, its warning that falsity is as positive or actual 
a property as truth must in turn receive full consideration. 

In the third place, common sense demands that whatever the 
criterion of “truth,” it must be of such a nature that one who 
understands the theory can apply it. If it is not applicable, it 
may be nicely reasoned, but it will hardly be worth while. Given 
the definition, we ought to be able to tell a true proposition from 
a false one. In fine the definition ought to be applicable. A 
definition which precludes its application must be rejected. 

Given a theory which is self-critical, which is general, which 
is catholic, which is applicable, you have a fairly acceptable 
theory of truth. 


SUBJECTIVE THEORIES OF TRUTH 
(a) Logical Hedonism 

A theory of truth is hedonistic when it identifies all true 
entities with pleasing entities, with comforting entities, with 
entities which we wish were “true.” It is not a vague theory; 
it can be made as precise as geometry. And judging from the 
number of its followers, I should say it was the usual theory of 
truth. It has two aspects, one individualistic, the other col- 
lectivistic. 

Ask a man why in the long run he believes anything and he 
will come back to this hedonistic theory. He will believe in a 
future life because a belief in a future life keeps him straight, 
and he wants to be kept straight. It is a comfort to him to know 
that he shall not lie in the dust. He could not live at all were 
it not for this belief in immortality. When asked why he could 
not live, he would say that it is because life would not be worth 
living. He would say that a belief in immortality is necessary for 
his well-being. In other words his happiness demands it. It is 
true because of the emotional thrill it gives him. 


1921] Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth. 191 


The notion of annihilation, on the other hand, is essentially 
false. It rnbs the wrong way: it is opposed to all human desires 
and aspirations. All the values of life are negated by such a 
notion; it is too horrible to be true. Its falsity arises just from 
the extreme discomfort which the idea gives us; perhaps its 
falsity is this discomfort. 

Very few people are willing to admit that they believe in those 
propositions which are pleasant and reject those which are un¬ 
pleasant. They would no doubt consider this hedonistic theory 
extremely illogical. And yet it is of all theories one of the most 
logical. 

In the first place it is self-critical. Its truth can be tested by 
its own rules. For in its.elf it is a very comforting and agreeable 
theory. And that would make it true. 

The objection that all people would not find it comforting 
is not fatal. There is no need for all people to find it comforting. 
“If p is comforting, then p is true.” Nothing is said about 
p’s being comforting to all minds. But perhaps this leads to 
contradiction. A may find p comforting and B may find it dis¬ 
tressing. Can a proposition be both true and false ? This seems 
on the face of it to be a serious contradiction; and yet it is not 
a contradiction at all. “A is pleased by p” by no means con¬ 
tradicts “B is displeased by p”; they are two utterly different 
propositions. But the theory is relativistic. To call it relativistic 
is surely not to damn it. P is true in one system of relation and 
may indeed be false in another; why should such a relativism be 
vicious? But the theory itself can have only relative truth. 
Even that may be admitted without harm. To say that a theory 
is only relatively true is merely to say that it is true because of 
the relation it sustains. 1 And the hedonistic theory is true as 

i The distinction between the relative and the incomplete—the partial 
—has sometimes been overlooked. If one says that a proposition is “ rela¬ 
tively’ ’ true one is apt to be criticized upon the ground that one main¬ 
tains the proposition to be only partly true. But is there any reason to 
doubt that at least some—if not all—of an entity's properties are defined 
by the relations it sustains? In that case all that would be meant by 
such a relatively-defined property would be the fact that it is in the 
relation in question. But in that case one could scarcely say that the 
property only “partly" belonged to the entity. We distinguish pink from 
crimson, for example, by pointing out its lack of chromatic saturation and 
its large measure of ‘ 1 lightness . 1 ’ That is, it is a red which has a definite 



192 University of California Publications in Philosophy, ^ 


long as there is a soul to find comfort in it. Only that theory 
could be absolutely true which was comforting to all possible 
souls or to an absolute soul. But until we take a completer census 
than is possible or until we discover the absolute soul we must 
be content with relative truth. And why not ? Truth once deter¬ 
mined is the same no matter how many souls experience it. 

After such reflections it might be well to admit that the theory 
is self-critical. It is moreover sufficiently general. For not only 
does it not presuppose any specific metaphysics, epistemology, or 
psychology, but it does away with almost all logic and reasoning. 
Indeed its economy in this respect is terrifying. If the pleasure 
a proposition arouses in one is indicative (or constitutive) of its 
truth, obviously there is little need of reasoning. Why gather 
premises and draw conclusions? Why not simply feel? Thus 
the experiments of the laboratory and the researches of the 
analyst are all rendered superfluous. 

That the theory is catholic has been shown above. Falsity is 
simply, the discomfort which the experiencing of any proposition 
causes. And a proposition to which one is indifferent is mean¬ 
ingless. 

But when we come to intelligibility, we find the theory break¬ 
ing down. Given a proposition, ‘ ‘ Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 
1493 a.d.,” I am to determine its truth or falsity. Contemplate 


place in the series of reds. But two of its properties, mentioned above, 
are defined by its place in the series, by its relation to other reds. Con¬ 
sequently we may say it is relatively weak, relatively unsaturated. But 
that does not imply that once determined these properties are onlv 
“partly” there. 

When this is applied to truth we find even the Absolutistic definition 
of truth relativistic. The Absolutist says that nothing is unified or whole 
except the Absolute. The fact that many concepts are defined through 
relations is used as a starting point. An entity is made up of properties; 
these are determined by relations; these relations imply other entities 
and other relations. In this way we pass, as on bridges, over the relations 
an entity sustains to other entities. Finally we reach the Whole, an entity 
whose relations are all within itself; it is a whole beyond which there is 
nothing. The whole is unified perhaps by an act of judgment. (Cf 
Bosanquet, B., Logic , ed. 2, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1911, vol. I, p. 31 
and p. 71, on the unifying capacity of judgment.) Such a whole is per¬ 
fectly intelligible, and if all knowledge were so unified and because of 
such, unity “true,” truth would, to repeat, be determined by relations 
but it would not be “partial truth,” i.e., either true of only a part of 
that whose property it is, or partly true of all of that whose property it is. 
(I assume that to be partly anything means the entity qualified has parts 
some of which are the property, or that the property has parts some of 
which qualify the entity.) 



1921] Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth. 193 

the proposition as I will, I get no reaction from it whatsoever. 
I am quite as cold as I am in the face of “Caesar crossed the 
Rubicon in 625 b.c. ” Apparently the two propositions are mean¬ 
ingless. But Caesar did cross the Rubicon sometime or other and 
even were I confronted with a proposition accurately symbolizing 
that fact, I should be neither pleased nor displeased; so that even 
such a proposition would be meaningless. 

The hedonist would probably retort that such propositions 
would be meaningless—indifferent—only to me, whereas they 
might be full of meaning to someone else and hence could be 
true or false. Now if “true” is defined as “agreeable,” the two 
terms ought to be equivalent. That is, wherever one is used, the 
other ought to be capable of being used. And it is soon dis¬ 
covered that much of the value of a theory of truth is the aid it 
gives you in discovering true propositions. It is of great interest 
to men to know the truth—why I shall not say. Can they know 
the truth when they know all agreeable propositions? This is to 
be sure a mere argumentum ad hominem. But it simply points 
out the difficulty of discovering the truth of propositions which 
one suspects are true—because of any theory you please—by the 
means afforded by the hedonistic theory. In short no matter how 
many times a man sails round the earth, he can never fully 
believe the proposition, “The earth is round,” until he feels a 
certain elation in the idea. 

An elation in the idea. But what is the idea ? Is it the mere 
symbol, the words, the thought, or is it the idea i( that the earth 
is round”? Does the proposition, “The earth is round” or the 
proposition, “The earth is round is true” please anyone? As 
soon as the hedonist admits that he is after all pleased by the 
truth of the proposition, then he abandons his former position. 
No longer is the pleasure derived from the experience of proposi¬ 
tions constitutive of their truth: the truth of propositions is 
evocative of pleasure. But if this be the case, “true” is still 
undefined. 

And it must be the case in the final analysis. When the 
proposition is looked at as a mere symbol, as so much sound or 
sight, as a pattern, whatever pleasure is derived from the 


194 University of California Publications in Philosophy. [ VoL 2 

experiencing of that symbol is purely esthetic. Once you have 
admitted that the proposition really 44 stands for something and 
it is of that something you are thinking when you are pleased, you 
have abandoned your hedonistic theory altogether and taken truth 
for granted. Clinging to your hedonistic theory—which now is an 
esthetic matter—you will find any abracadabra as sweetly tuned 
as a significant series of words. And in that case you are no 
longer talking about logic. You are not talking at all. 

This criticism holds whether the logical hedonism be indi¬ 
vidualistic or collectivistic. There seems to be a belief current 
that a hundred mistakes create a truth. Consequently massed 
opinion counts for more than isolated opinion. This is of course 
no argument against the criticism urged above. Be the pleasure 
individual or social, if my reasoning is correct, the theory falls. 

Many a hedonist again must meet this second difficulty. 
Although a proposition can be false in one system of relation and 
true in another, can it be true and false in the same one ? If it 
can, all reasoning is vitiated, that is all reasoning that is based 
on the law of contradiction. In that case the reasoning which 
substantiates hedonism is partly vitiated. If it can not, the 
hedonist is falling back upon a principle of consistency. He is 
presupposing that all propositions implied by true propositions 
are true. Translated into hedonistic terms, this would read, 44 All 
propositions implied by pleasant propositions are pleasant. ” But 
this is in the first place not the case. And in the second place it 
is to abandon in part the cardinal principle of hedonism itself, 
namely, that one can recognize a true proposition by the affective 
coefficients of the experiencing of it. 2 

2 1 spend all this time upon what seems like an inherently trivial 
theory because of its close relation to an ethical theory which is regarded 
as something inherently profound. Hedonistic logic is considered rather 
childish, but Hedonistic ethics is considered most mature. It is stupid to 
assert that the pleasant is the true, but it is sagacious to assert that the 
pleasant is the good. And yet the very criticisms which apply to a 
hedonistic logic apply with equal force to a hedonistic ethics. One is no 
more intelligible than the other. Both secretly leave undefined the very 
objects of the definition. 



1921] Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth. 195 


(&) Truth as the Irresistible 

A second subjectivistic theory of truth finds the criterion of 
true propositions in the forcefulness with which they are known. 
Those propositions which can not be denied are true. Unlike 
logical hedonism, this theory has many historical manifestations. 

I intend to give a short account of these before criticizing the 
theory. It must however be remembered that the problem of 
truth as a self-conscious, as an explicit problem, has scarcely 
occupied the minds of thinkers until recent times. 

The first thinkers to believe in truth as the irresistible were 
the Stoics and Epicureans. They both derive their epistemologies 
from Democritus. Shorn of its primitive psychological and 
physicistic phrases, the epistemology of Democritus may be ex¬ 
plained as a theory which posits a “mind” acted upon by 
“objects of knowledge.” As far as I know such a passive role 
was generally assigned to the mind up to the time of Kant. It 
is a feature which may be looked upon as distinguishing the two 
most prominent attitudes towards the problem of knowledge. 
The function of the mind, then, is to receive, not to act (except 
in assenting to true propositions). 3 

What the mind receives is “impressions” from the world of 
knowable objects. When once the mind has been affected by 
these impressions, it is said to possess ‘ ideas, sensations, 
“percepts.” Looking upon the matter without reference to the 
process, we find the mind in relation to entities, which relation 
constitutes knowledge. Adopting the terminology of Professor 


3 V Windelband, W.: History of Philosophy, tr. by Tufts, J. H., ed. 
2 New York, The Macmillan Co., 1914, pp. 207-8. “Judgment . . . is 
conceived of by the Stoics ... by no means merely as the theoretical 
process of ideation and combination of ideas. They recognized, as the 
essential characteristic in judgment, the peculiar act of assent (ovyKard 
Q e< ris) of approval, and of being convinced, with which the mind makes 
the content of the idea its own, grasps it, and in a certain^ 
possession of it («. rakatfAw). This act of apprehension the Stoics regard 
as an independent function of consciousness {yyefMPucdv ), m the same way 
as they regard the assent to the impulses, which makes its appearance in 
passion The arising of ideas, like that of the excitations of feeling, is a 
process which is of natural necessity and completely independent of human 
will UKotortov) rmy italics]; but the assent by which we make the one class, 
judgments, and the other, passions, is a decision (tpfecs) of consciousness, 

free (£koil><tiov) from the outer world. ^ 

The italicized portions indicate the receptive aspect of the theo y. 



196 University of California Publications in Philosophy. ITol. 2 


Alexander, let ns call the entities when outside of the knowledge- 
relation ‘ ‘ sensibilia, ’ ’ and when within the knowledge-relation, 
“sensa.” 4 

Obviously there might be an affective coefficient to the knowl¬ 
edge-relation. Sensa might be particularly brilliant, particularly 
impenetrable, particularly intense. It is taken for granted, 
according to this theory, that when the sensa are intense, the 
knowledge received is credible, but that when the sensa are dull, 
vague, scarcely felt, the knowledge is dubitable. Now knowledge 
which one can believe whole-heartedly—one must use emotional 
words in expounding this theory—is true, and knowledge which 
we can doubt is—not probably false—but false. In other words 
the truth is what you can not help believing in. And your in¬ 
capacity springs from the vividness with which the true some¬ 
thing impresses itself upon you. 

There is some doubt as to whether the Epicureans or the 
Stoics or both held this doctrine. 5 It makes very little difference 


4 ‘‘Perceptibilia ’’ and “percepta” would do just as well for our pur¬ 
poses, though not for Professor Alexander’s. 

5 See Hicks, R. D., “Stoics,” Encyclopedia Britannica , ed. 11, p. 946Z> 
for a discussion of the meaning of KaraXyirTiK'n <t>avraala. 

“Formerly this technical phrase was explained to mean ‘the percep¬ 
tion which irresistibly compels the subject to assent to it as true » But 
this, though apparently supported by Sextus Empiricus (Adv. Math vii 

p. 257), is quite erroneous; for the presentation is called KaraX V irr6v 
as well as KaraXyirTiK^, so that beyond all doubt it is something which the 
percipient subject grasps, and not that which ‘lays hold of’ the percipient. 
Nor, again, is it wholly satisfactory to explain KaTaXrjirTiKifi as virtually 
passive, ‘apprehensible/ like its opposite, dKardiXyirros, for we find 

q. vtCX yn TiK'f) t<2 V viroKei^vwv used as an alternative phrase. It would seem 
that the perception intended to constitute the standard of truth is one 
which, by producing a mental counterpart of a really existent external 
thing, enables the percipient, in the very act of sense, to ‘lay hold of’ 
or apprehend an object in virtue of the presentation or sense impression 
of it excited in his own mind.” 


Zeller seems to disagree with this interpretation. “If the question is 
raised. How are true perceptions distinguished from false ones? the 
immediate reply given by the Stoics is, that a true perception is one 
which represents a real object as it really is. You are no further with 
this answer, and the question has again to be asked, How may it be 
known that a perception faithfully represents a reality? The Stoics can 
only reply by pointing to a relative, but not to an absolute, test—the 
degree of strength with which certain perceptions force themselves on our 
notice. . Some of our perceptions are . . . of such a kind that they 
at once oblige us to bestow on them assent, compelling us not only to 
regard them as probable, but also as true and corresponding with the 
actual nature of things. Such perceptions . . . are . . . termed concep¬ 
tion^ perceptions. Whenever a perception forces itself upon us in this 
irresistible form, we are no longer dealing with a fiction of the imagina- 



1921] Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth. 197 

to our discussion whether it was ever held. It is a plausible 
doctrine and for that reason alone must be considered. Examples 
of what is meant by irresistible knowledge can be found in the 
experiences of everyday life in what is usually called sense- 
knowledge. ’ ’ When you open your eyes before the blinding sun, 
you are supposed to be in possession of indubitable and inevitable 
knowledge, knowledge which is inevitable simply because of the 
power and intensity with which its objects affect—and now we 
may use the word metaphorically—the mind. 

The relations of this doctrine to other doctrines are particu¬ 
larly interesting. We find Descartes, for instance, positing a 
similar criterion for what he will believe in. No matter what 
he held to be the objects of knowledge—and it must be remem¬ 
bered that the distinctions between “things/’ “ideas,” “judg¬ 
ments,” “propositions,” were not rigidly defined until recently 
—he refused to assent to anything but what was “clear and dis¬ 
tinct. ’ ’ Whenever an idea stands before one in perfect brilliance 
—such as the idea of self-identity—one can not doubt it. “I can 
not but believe that I who doubt exist.” “I have a clear notion 
of the existence of God.” Such propositions being so luminous 
are inevitable again. They carry their own proof with them. 
They are self-evident. They shriek at you and will not be 
downed. Put in these words, the connection with Epicureanism 
is easily seen. Descartes probably did not mean that the idea of 
God’s existence came winging its way to the mind, like a 
Democritean eidolon. Quite the contrary, it was born into the 
world with the mind which it possesses. But just as the Demo¬ 
critean eidolon fixes itself upon the knowing soul until it can not 
be denied, so the Cartesian true idea compels the mind to give 
assent. 6 

tion, but with something real. ... Or, expressing the same idea in the 
language of Stoicism, conceptional or irresistible perceptions <pavraalai 
KaraXrixTiKal are the standards of truth, etc.’' Zeller: Stoics, Epicureans, 
and Sceptics, tr. by O. J. Eeichel, London, Longmans, 1880, p. 88. 

For the literature on this subject see Pearson: Fragments of Zeno and 
Cleanthes, London, C. J. Clay & Sons, 1891, pp. 62-63, where the fragment 
itself is given in which the phrases occur. 

e It would be obviously absurd to attribute these thoughts to Descartes. 
Yet wherever he gives us evidence that he is a “ rationalist/ ’ he also 
gives us equally good evidence that he is a ‘‘sensationalist.” The truth 
is that he is one of the few epistemologists with two types of knowledge, 



198 University of California Publications in Philosophy. IT o1 - 2 


Like the Cartesian criterion is the criterion of modern sensa¬ 
tionalism which in turn would reduce the mind’s stock of true 
knowledge to a stock of knowledge derived from sense-experience 
or from the immediately given. 7 The only reason why the sensa¬ 
tionalist reduces knowledge to sense-experience is that he believes 
in the indubitability of sense-experience. In his dogma, a dogma 
in which Descartes of course would find little that was sympa¬ 
thetic, the senses can not lie. And since they can not lie, we 
ought to be able to find in them the seeds of all true knowledge. 
For, assuming that what is implied by a true proposition is true, 
the initiation of a system of thought by sense-experience would 
be the most adequate means of securing a system of true proposi¬ 
tions. The reason why sense-knowledge is indubitable is seldom 
stated. It is apparently axiomatic with the sensationalistic school. 

To avoid a peculiar psychology, epistemologists have often 
substituted for sense-knowledge the “immediately given.” 


one “sensory," one i 1 conceptual, ' ' who seem to cling to their distinc¬ 
tion. The goodness of God is his assurance that “external things" exist 
(Meditation VI, CEuvres, ed. by V. Cousin, Paris, Levrault, 1824, p. 334). 
But the knowledge of external things comes through “the senses," and 
Descartes admits (op. cit., p. 327) that sometimes sensory ideas are “plus 
vives, plus expresses, et meme d leur fagon plus distinctes qu ’ aucunes de celles 
que je pouvois feindre de moi-meme en meditant. ..." There is however 
that other type of knowledge—not mediate, it must be remembered—but 
inborn. That the knowledge of God, from which all other knowledge 
gains value, is of the latter type, is what might incline us to the opinion 
that Descartes is not a ‘ ‘ sensationalist.' ’ But it must be remembered that 
for him the “cause" of our ideas was in itself a problem, and whether he 
identifies that cause with “external objects" or with Trod, he is one with 
the Democriteans. “ De plus,” he says (op. cit., p 333), “ je ne puis douter 
qu’il n’y ait en moi une certaine faculte passive de sentir, c’est-d-dire de 
recevoir et de connoitre les idees des choses sensibles . . ., and thus seems to 
be a receptivist. But he finishes his sentence by remarking, “mais elle me 
seroit inutile, et je ne nien pourrois aucunement servir s’il n’y avoit aussi 
en moi, ou en quelque autre chose, une autre faculte active, capable de former 
et produire ces idees.’’ Thus he posits a sort of “ intelligizing" mind. 

It is because of Descartes' doctrine of “clear and distinct" ideas—a 
phrase of no uncertain “passive" connotation—and because of passages 
similar to those quoted above, that we have compared him with the Stoics. 

7 One of the best examples of this is seen in William James: The 
Function of Cognition, p. 39, reprinted in The Meaning of Truth, New York, 
Longmans, 1914. “These percepts, these termini, these sensible things, 
these mere matters-of-acquaintance, are the only realities we ever directly 
know, and the whole history of our thought is the history of our sub¬ 
stitution of one of them for another, and the reduction of the substitute 
to the status of a conceptual sign. Contemned though they be by some 
thinkers, these sensations are the mother-earth, the anchorage, the stable 
rock, the first and last limits, the terminus a quo and the terminus ad quern 
of the mind. To find such sensational termini should be our aim with 



1921] Boas: An Analysis of Certa/in Theories of Truth. 199 


Instead of finding a criterion for truth in sensations, the immedi- 
atists find it in whatever the primitive data of knowledge (or 
experience) are. To call them “sensations ’’ would be inelegant; 
they may turn out to be anything else the psychologist finds them 
to be. The immediatist simply presupposes a mind and objects, 
some of which are “known directly,” without the mediation of 
“ ideas’ * which copy them. And whatever it is that is known 
directly gives rise to or partly constitutes true knowledge. Again 
this must be an axiom, for there seems to be no reason why the 
elements of knowledge should be any truer than the less primitive 
features. There, however, the matter rests. You have an idea, 
you have knowledge, you can not doubt it because nothing stands 
between you and what you know. Something must be true. Why 
not the indubitable? But to have removed a sensation and sub¬ 
stituted an “immediately given” is not to have changed the logic 
of the situation. We are not yet interested in knowing what is 
true, but why what is true is true. And the immediatist answers 


all our higher thought. They end discussion; they destroy the false 
conceit of knowledge; and without them we are all at sea with each 
other’s meaning. If two men act alike on a precept, they believe them¬ 
selves to feel alike about it; if not, they may suspect they know it m 
differing ways. We can never be sure we understand each other till we 
are able to bring the matter to this test. This is why metaphysical dis¬ 
cussions are so much like fighting with the air; they have no practical 
issue of a sensational kind. ‘ Scientific’ theories, on the other hand, 
always terminate in definite percepts. You can deduce a possible sensation 
from your theory and, taking me into your laboratory, prove that your 
theory is true of my world by giving me the sensation then and there . . . 

This needs no comment. What sensation would a scientist give a man 
in proof of the atomic theory? 

A more classic example of the reduction of the “ higher processes 
to sensation may be found in the second section of Hume’s Enquiry “upon 
the origin of ideas.” He begins, it will be remembered, by differentiating 
our cognitive life into two parts, first, present “experience,” second, 
remembered “experience,” parts which differ only in their property of 
foreefulness, “vigor.” “The most lively thought is still inferior to the 
dullest sensation,” he says (paragraph 1), and names his two classes 
“thoughts” and “impressions.” He then proves that all thoughts can 
be analyzed into elementary sensations and that the absence of a sense 
organ determines the absence of appropriate ideation (paragraphs 6 and 
7) And finally he says—as James does—“When we entertain, therefore, 
any suspicion that a philosophical term is employed without any mean¬ 
ing or idea (as is but too frequent), we need but enquire, from what 
impression is that supposed idea derived? And if it be impossible to assign 
any this will serve to confirm our suspicion. By bringing our ideas into 
so clear a light [my italics] we may reasonably hope to remove all dis¬ 
pute, which may arise, concerning their nature and reality. (Para¬ 
graph 9.) 



200 University of California Publications in Philosophy . [Vol. 2 


with the sensationalist, with Descartes, with the Epicurean, an 
entity is true because you can not help believing it. 8 

When you abandon psychology, when you speak of the im¬ 
mediately-given as the true, you are not very far from mysticism. 
The mystic justifies his knowledge of the One by adducing its 
intensity, its self-luminosity. He knows that he is face to face 
with God because he is completely immersed and lost in the 
experience. 9 This highest knowledge has seized him by force and 
poured forth its radiance upon him. “If you doubt,’’ he cries, 
“it is because you have never had the vision. Once possessed by 
it you can not doubt the message which it brings.” A better 
case of the ^avracrta KaTaXy^irTUrj of the Stoics, whether you inter¬ 
pret it as an irresistible idea or as an idea which grasps reality and 
so illumines the mind, could scarcely be found. I have knowledge 
of God because I can not doubt it. The idea fills my whole being 
with its truth. 10 There is little difference after all between the 
Ecstatic Vision and the Ecstatic Sensation. 

This brief and perhaps too cursory sketch of the theory’s his¬ 
tory must suffice. There are only a few specific criticisms to be 
directed at it before applying our criteria for a satisfactory 
theory of truth. In the first place there stands prominent the 
assumption that what is true must be identical with the ele¬ 
mentary facts of knowledge. In other words, the criterion for 
truth is identified with what is epistemologically simple. If 


s The question whether “truth” must be compounded of “true ele¬ 
ments “will concern us later. But there is no principle of synthesis which 
insists that the properties of elements must be properties of complexes 
which those elements form. The best example of this is the trite example 
furnished by chemistry. p 

» Compare the mystic fusion of mind and object in the Ecstatic Vision 
with on the one hand the reduction of the mind to a complex of obiects 
(American new realism especially Holt, E. B.: The Concept of Conscious¬ 
ness, New York, Macmillan Co., 1914), and on the other of the obiects to 
a complex of mmd-entities, ideas (Subjectivism). The motive in both 
cases seems to be the same. Knowledge must in the long run be un- 
mediated. Hence all barriers between knower and known must be 
removed. It is inevitable that an identity be established, if not in so 
many words, at least m effect. 

10 These are the commonplaces of criticisms of mysticism. Beferences 
to sources seem almost unnecessary. To see them reinforced by numerous 
citations of the mystics themselves, one should turn to Lectures XVI and 
inlo ° f . m ,? s s Varieties of Religious Experience, New York, Longmans 
1903, especially the quotations from Saint Teresa (pp. 408-4121 the font* 
note on Boehme (p. 410, n. 2), and the quotation from Plotinus (p 420)! 





1921 ] Baas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth. 201 


irresistibility is the criterion then knowledge must be analyzed 
into elements which in turn are irresistible. If knowledge, to 
reverse the process, is a complex of sensations, then sensations 
must be true. One’s growth in knowledge seems to be a 
development out of truth to increasing falsity. Such logical 
pessimism may be justifiable, but it should not be assumed at the 
outset. There is a link, we all feel, between what we know and 
the truth of what we know, but if truth is a criticism in any sense 
of what we know, there is no reason to assume that we start with 
the truth. We are all according to one man’s notion perhaps 
striving for “the truth.” It is rather strange to suppose that 
the struggle springs from the truth itself. It seems to be like 
supposing that moral values are unsubstantiated unless the 
primitive moral act—whatever its specific character—is itself the 
good. Accordingly the building up of knowledge from elements 
intrinsically true need be granted no more obeisance than any 
other procedure. There is quite as much reason to assume that 
ultimately simple knowledge is either always false or both true 
and false and becomes true as it grows complex or as it fills 
certain needs and so on. 

A similar confusion—perhaps the same in the long run—grows 
out of the attempt to make a psychogenetic account of knowledge 
reproduce the construction of a logical synthesis. Not only must 
the ultimate simples of epistemology be true, but they must be 
identical with the ultimate simples of logic. 11 For instance, a 
proposition can be analyzed logically into terms in relation. 
Accordingly knowledge is supposed to grow out of a knowledge 
of terms, now related among themselves, now related by the 
subject. We find on this basis the old dichotomy of “knowledge- 
of” and “knowledge-about,” and the latter grows out of, or is 
composed of the former. It is the relationship which perceptual 
knowledge is said to bear to conceptual knowledge, immediate 
to mediate, kennen to wissen, and so forth. Apart from the 
emotional differentiae of these two sorts of knowledge, they seem 


11 Cf. Aristotle’s Metaphysics (tr. by W. O. Ross, Oxford, 1908), Bk. IX 
(0) ch 10 1041b, where he deals with the truth and falsity of mcom- 
posites,'” pointing out that one can be in ignorance of them but not in 
error, and that one has the truth about these entities simply by think- 
ing” them. 



202 University of California Publications in Philosophy . IT o1 - 2 


to be related as the psychologists say perceptions are related to 
sensations. As soon as you get a sufficient number of sensations, 
you have a perception. What mysterious alchemy turns the 
leaden sensation into the golden perception is never revealed. 
It seems to be constituted by the mere charm of numbers. 12 

When knowledge-about is reduced to knowledge-of, you find 
a certain cognitive quality to the sting of sensation. Sensations 
are no longer mere ‘ ‘ modifications of the soul , 9 9 ‘ ‘ modes of con¬ 
sciousness, ’ 9 they are attached to things: they are no longer 
sensations, they are sensations-of. Accordingly the knowledge 
that the sun is shining is identical with that seemingly other 
entity, the sensation of peculiarly radiant brightness. When you 
receive—or have—a specific intense visual sensation, you have 
knowledge-of the sun. Now as a matter of fact one might stare 
at the sun until blindness set in and never be able to formulate 
the proposition, “The sun is shining.” One might have any 


12 The Stoics seemed to appreciate this fact. “Absolute certainty of 
conviction they allow only to knowledge, and therefore declared that the 
truth of perceptions of the senses depends on their relation to thought. 
Truth and error not belonging to disconnected notions, but to notions 
combined in the form of a judgment, and a judgment being produced by 
an effort of thought, it follows that sensations, talcen alone, are the source 
of no knowledge, knowledge first arising when the activity of the under¬ 
standing is allied to sensation.” Zeller: Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics, 
tr. by O. J. Reichel, London, Longmans, 1880, p. 83. 

Cf. Windelband, History of Philosophy, tr. by J. H. Tufts, ed. 2, New 
York, Macmillan, 1914, p. 207. 

“Although, therefore, the whole material of knowledge was held to 
grow out of sensuous presentations, the Stoics pointed out, on the other 
hand, that in perception as such, no knowledge whatever is contained; 
that it is not to be characterized as either true or false.’ ’ 

But see James: Psychology, Briefer Course, New York, Holt, 1900, for 
the classic confusion between sensations, perceptions, acquaintance and 
knowledge about. This confusion must not, however, be attributed to 
Bertrand Russell, who says, “Acquaintance, which is what we derive from 
sense, does not, theoretically at least, imply even the smallest ‘ knowledge 
about, i.e., it does not imply knowledge of any proposition concerning 
the object with which we are acquainted. It is a mistake to speak as 
if acquaintance has degrees: there is merely acquaintance. . . . Thus it 
is a mistake to say that if we were perfectly acquainted with an object 
we should know all about it. ‘Knowledge about’ is knowledge of propo¬ 
sitions, which is not involved necessarily in acquaintance with the con¬ 
stituents of the propositions. To know that two shades of color are 
different is knowledge about them; hence acquaintance with the two 
shades does not in any way necessitate the knowledge that they are 
different. ( Scientific Method in Philosophy, Chicago and London, Open 
Court, 1914, p. 144-145.) ’ * 

It is still of course a question whether two entities so different in 
character ought to be called by the same name, “knowledge.” What 




1921] Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth. 203 


number of similar experiences and be in utter ignorance. To 
formulate the proposition above requires, already possessed, at 
least sufficient knowledge to classify; and not only that, it 
requires memory and recall. The only possible proposition—or 
judgment, if you will—which could be legitimately made from 
the experience of any sensibile, is the judgment, “I am having 
an experience,” or more accurately, “Something is happening.” 
To infer what it is, is impossible. 

It will be seen from these two preliminary criticisms that 
there may be ultimately simple sensa; and that these sensa may 
become true or false because of their immediacy or inevitability 
or whatever affective process you will: but the truth of ultimately 
simple propositions must be determined without respect to their 
truth. For the two events are ineradicably different. Whatever 
the relation of the terms in a proposition to a subject, the fact 
that the whole proposition is so related and that it has the 


common property is there to ‘ ‘ acquaintance ’ ’ and ‘‘ knowledge-about ’ ’ that 
warrants their common name ‘‘knowledge’*? The feeling that ‘‘knowl¬ 
edge about ” is “ knowledge of ’ ’ propositions is of course justifiable. It 
must be tuned up with Mr. Russell’s inventory of the objects of acquaint¬ 
ance ( Problems of Philosophy, New York and London, Holt, n.d., p. 73 ff.) 
and with the following quotation from Scientific Method in Philosophy: 
“Whether an atomic proposition, such as ‘this is red,’ or ‘this is before 
that, * is to be asserted or denied can only be known empirically. Perhaps 
one atomic fact may sometimes be capable of being inferred from another, 
though this seems very doubtful; but in any case it cannot be inferred 
from premises no one of which is an atomic fact. It follows that, if 
atomic facts are to be known at all, some at least must be known without 
inference. The atomic facts which we come to Tcnow in this way are the 
facts of sense-perception; at any rate, the facts of sense-perception are those 
which we most obviously and certainly come to Tcnow in this way.” (My 

italics, p. 53.) . _ , 

For a typical “structuralistic” account of the genetic relation between 
sensation and perception see Titchener, E. B.: A Text-Book of Psychology, 
New York, Macmillan, 1913, p. 364. “The simplest kind of perception . . . 
—what we may call the pure perception—implies the grouping of sensa¬ 
tions under the laws of attention. But it is clear that perceptions are, 
as a rule, not made up solely of sensations; we see and hear and feel 
more than is presented to eye and ear and skin; the given sensations are 
supplemented by images. Most of our perceptions are mixed perceptions, 
complexes of sensory and imaginal elements; and the life of perception is, 
far more than one is apt to suppose, a life of imagination.” If we think 
of attention as an active “Kantian” factor, we are quickly checked by 
an earlier passage in the Text-Book, p. 267, “In the last resort, and in 
its simplest terms, attention is identical with sensory clearness.” 

Ano-ell, however, seems to be aware of the problem, but his experi¬ 
ence ” “ operating upon our sensory excitations at the very outset of 
life,” (Angell, J. R.: Psychology, ed. 4, New York, Holt, n.d., p. 157) 
seems a mystification rather than a clarification. 



204 University of California Publications in Philosophy. IT°1.2 

properties of its terms, cannot be inferred from it. I am not 
denying as yet that some propositions are not immediately given, 
are not clear and distinct, are not irresistible; I am simply assert¬ 
ing that the truth of even those propositions is by no means the 
truth of their terms. 13 Were this false, it might be a safe gen¬ 
eralization that the properties of terms became the properties of 
relational complexes constituted in part by those terms. Where¬ 
upon we could infer that since 2 is the second integer, 2 + 2 is 
also the second integer: or that because A has a sister, he is 
female. Let this statement contradict the dictum de omni if 
necessary; there is always one property of a whole which none 
of its parts possesses, and that is the property of being a whole 
composed of those specific parts. 14 

To overcome this difficulty, radical empiricism presupposes 
knowledge-of terms-in-relation. 

“Radical empiricism , } ’ said James, “consists first of a postulate, 
next of a statement of fact, and finally of a generalized conclusion. . . . 

“The statement of fact is that the relations between things, con¬ 
junctive as well as disjunctive, are just as much matters of direct par¬ 
ticular experience, neither more so nor less so, than the things themselves. 

“The generalized conclusion is that therefore the parts of experience 
hold together from next to next by relations that are themselves part of 
experience. The directly apprehended universe needs, in short, no extran¬ 
eous trans-empirical connective support, but possesses in its own right a 
concatenated or continuous structure. ’*15 

This “statement of fact” may be perfectly true and yet the 
difficulty is not met. (Although James is not here to be sure 
attempting to meet the special difficulty we are considering.) 
The position advanced is that when I assert an immediately 
given truth, I know “directly” the terms in relation which are 
symbolized by the true proposition in question. But the refuge 
is not sufficiently protective. The confusion of the psychogenetic 
with the logical is as destructive as ever. For what new element 
is introduced into knowledge-of complexes which was not 
present in knowledge-of terms; what new element that can 

is We are assuming here that terms can be significantly called “true.” 

1 4 The reference to the dictum must not be taken too seriously. 

Omni ’ * is no doubt to be interpreted distributively not collectively. 

is The Meaning of Truth, New York, Longmans, 1914, pp. xii, xiii. 




1921] Bom: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth . 205 

transsubstantiate knowledge-of complexes' into knowledge-about 
complexes? You may say from dawn to dewy eve that you 
“know-the-book-on-the-table,” or “the-red-rose ’ 9 and you will not 
be able to infer that the book is on the table or that the rose is 
red. The most important symbol, the one symbol which always 
indicates knowledge-about is lacking, the symbol “that.” And 
it is “that” which is the differentia of cognition from other 
experiences, which imparts “meaning” to what is known. We 
state this here dogmatically. Later we hope to discuss it in more 
detail. Now if knowledge-of is supposed to give you this element, 
too, is supposed to present meanings to a subject, then it is in 
no way different from knowledge-about. Sense-words, as every¬ 
one knows, are used as often to indicate knowledge-about as 
knowledge-of. “I see that the book is on the table” is no more 
knowledge-of than “I know that the book is on the table.” But 
this ambiguity need not lead to more serious ambiguities. If 
one touches that the wall is hard, for instance, one has gone over 
from immediate to mediate knowledge, from perceptual to con¬ 
ceptual knowledge. And the analysis which mirrored episte¬ 
mologically the logical analysis has been abandoned. 

In fine, then, it is useless to try to build up knowledge from 
elements which are not cognitive. It would be like logically 
analyzing water into transparency, wetness, fluidity, tastelessness, 
colorlessness, etc., and telling a chemist to produce transparent, 
wet, fluid, tasteless, colorless water out of the elements. The 
reduction of knowledge getting to the exemplification of the 
process of analyzing propositions is like the assertion that since 
we learn long words syllable by syllable, so the meaning of words 
must be traced to the meaning of the syllables. Which will do 
very well for “telegram,” but won t do at all for character. 

All this criticism can not apply to all thinkers who have found 
the criterion of truth in the effect of true propositions upon a 
receptive mind. The process of criticism has been largely an 
interpretation of selected epistemologies in the light of their 
implicit theories of truth. Whereas I shall now make certain 
generalizations about these theories, I shall not expect them to fit 
the individual epistemologies of such thinkers or schools of 


206 University of California Publications in Philosophy . IT o1 * 2 

thought as I have mentioned by name. I take it then for granted 
that the particular vices or the theories we have here discussed 
are: 

(1) An identification of the logically prior with the genet¬ 
ically prior; 

(2) An identification of the elements of propositions with 
the ultimate simples of cognitive experience; 

(3) An identification of the criterion of truth with the ulti¬ 
mate simples of cognitive experience. 

In opposition to these dogmas, this paper holds: 

(1) That the genetic series may be either from simple to 
complex or from complex to simple; 

(2) That there is a point at which a further analysis of 
cognition breaks it down into entities which are no longer 
cognitive in character and hence valueless for an understanding 
of cognition; 

(3) That the ultimate simples of cognition may be either true 
or false or both indeterminately. 

Having now criticized our theory in general, let us test it by 
the four criteria of a satisfactory theory of truth laid down in 
our first chapter. 

To begin, the theory is not self-critical. For if there were 
no better test of the lack of resistibility, clearness, indubita- 
bility, our long and perhaps tedious efforts to rationalize it would 
suffice. But is it as a whole supposed to be irresistible, or are 
the postulates alone so characterized? In itself, one might say, 
in its totality as a system, the theory is indeed too complex to be 
irresistible, but it can be analyzed into a set of primitive ideas 
and propositions which considered individually are indubitable. 

Let us isolate the system from its postulates. Let us examine 
them, whatever they may be, and discover in them, if possible, 
an irresistible something which marks them as true. 

In the first place one wonders where this something is to be 
found. Just what is it about these propositions which is held to 
be clear and distinct, irresistible, immediately given? One can 
not, of course, enumerate all the properties of propositions in this 
search; one must confine one’s self to a few. 





1921] Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth. 207 

Perhaps it is the meaning of the proposition which possesses 
the desirable characteristic. Perhaps those propositions which 
are immediately grasped, whose meaning is clear and distinct, 
and hence indubitable, are true. But is the meaning of a proposi¬ 
tion ever immediately grasped, or is it not reached, as are all 
other meanings, only after a long process of interpretation ? As 
Professor Royce points out, the mere perception of a sign would 
never give you its meaning. 16 As soon as the interpretation is 
completed, if it is ever completed, the meaning is seen at a flash. 
But is that a peculiarity of true propositions? Are not false 
propositions as easily understood as true ones? As far as mean¬ 
ing goes, “Caesar was the fourth President of the United States” 
is as intelligible as “Madison was the fourth President of the 
United States.” And when the proposition is interpreted, it is 
just as hard to avoid “seeing” what it means. 

But of course epistemologists of the past, Descartes, for in¬ 
stance, had no intention of limiting the range of “truth” to 
propositions. Like many another epistemologist, he spoke of 
true “ideas.” The clarifying of the issue is really a contempo¬ 
rary matter. And even today we have reached no startlingly 
illuminating doctrine. Accordingly it was easy for Descartes to 
say that “ideas” are “true” when they are clear and distinct. 
But what he means by “idea,” and what aspect of the “idea” 
he finds clear and distinct, it is not easy to tell. ‘ ‘ I have a clear 
and distinct idea of God; therefore God exists.” But does this 
mean that one can define “God” in unmistakable terms; does it 
mean that one has a feeling of God ’s presence; does it mean that 
one has had immediate knowledge of God, that one was born 
with an “idea” of God—in other words that one has never 
doubted His existence? If it is just a question of the concept’s 
meaning, obviously the same thing would hold true of all intel¬ 
ligible concepts as of all intelligible propositions, namely that 
they all have a meaning and that when they are interpreted, 
their meaning is irresistible, is clear and distinct, is indubitable. 

It is no doubt unfair to reason in this way about problems 
which never occurred to the men whom one is criticizing. But 

i6 The Problem of Christianity, New York, Macmillan, 1913, vol. II, pp. 
286 ff. 



208 University of California Publications in Philosophy. IWol. 2 


what is said here is said about the theory not so much as it was 
incompletely formulated historically, but as it might be formu¬ 
lated if rounded out into a genuine system of theoretical import, 
with presuppositions and implications well set forth. And to 
achieve this end one would most assuredly have to face the issue, 
“What in the true entity is immediately given; what can’t I 
doubt ? ’ ’ And one is forced almost against one’s will into a dis¬ 
cussion upon the nature of propositions, meanings, judgments, 
ideas. If one avoids defining such ambiguous terms and uses 
them as fundamentals in one’s theory of truth, obviously it is 
in the interest of science to point out their ambiguity. 

If it is not the meaning of the proposition which can not be 
doubted—can not, note, often for purely psychological reasons 17 — 
one begins to suspect that it is the truth of the proposition 
which can not be doubted. In sense-experience, for instance, 
what is irresistible is “that I am having such and such an ex¬ 
perience”; in the mystic vision, “that I am face to face with 
God. ’ ’ But if this be the case, it is easily seen that the criterion 
of truth has in no way been found. The search has simply been 
delayed. This or that proposition is true because its truth is 
immediately given. Whether truth is ever immediately given is 
a question, but a question beside the point. The point is that 
one asks when a proposition is true and is told, “when it is true.” 
One is told that a proposition is true when it is indubitable, etc., 
and when one asks what is indubitable, one is told—its truth. 

A guess might be hazarded that this theory fails where many 
a theory of ethics fails, in trying to derive standards from 
elements which have no normative character. Whatever the 
nature of truth, it is in some sense of the word a standard used 
to criticize all propositions. 18 On need not pretend to have found 


i7 This ‘can not” must be differentiated from the “cannot” of the 
post-Kantian idealists (Fichte, for example), the English Hegelians with 
their “inconceivable,” and Royce with his “reflective method.” The 
can not of the irresistibility-theory is due to human limitations, is a 
purely psychological affair. The “can not” of Fichte, Joachim, say and 
Royce is a logical matter. Those propositions must be accepted whose 
denial can not be accepted—because it would involve a contradiction 


is Truth as a “value,” cognate with “goodness” and “beauty ” is 
as everyone knows, an old story. It often seems, however, as if its age 
implied its decay. And yet there is still a good deal to be said for treat- 



1921] Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth. 209 


a method for defining value-terms when one asserts that a certain 
method is faulty. Nor do we here pretend to have found a 
definition for truth when we say that a definition can not be 
transmuted from materials which have none of the potentialities 
of truth. To have defined the truth as “what we accept as the 
truth” is analogous to defining the good as “what we accept as 
the good. ’’ In both cases the issue is deferred, and the issue is 
the discovery of those reasons—if reasons there be—why we 
accept this as the truth and why we accept this as the good. 
One can easily make a catalog of true propositions in the way 
suggested. But this catalog will only be valuable in so far as 
it throws light on what sort of propositions are accepted and 
what differentiates them from other propositions. If knowledge 
proceeds in any way by analysis, a mere collection of data, 
related but not rationalized, is hardly an intelligible contribution 
to progress. When one seeks a definition, it is, to be sure, valu¬ 
able to have already isolated the materials to be defined. But 
to have merely isolated them is not to have defined them except 
dumbly and inarticulately. To have isolated them and known 
why and on what principle the selection was made is of course 
to have completed the work. 

The first criterion, we may safely say, has not been satisfied. 
The theory is not self-critical. Is it now sufficiently general, or is 
it based upon a specific epistemology or psychology with which 
it stands or falls? 

To answer this question is especially difficult. For in so far 
as our theory is one theory, it has been a construct of the views 
of many thinkers who agreed, often unconsciously, and mainly 
in their attitudes towards truth alone. This may be proof enough 

ing truth as a value. Certainly it plays a part in our lives somewhat 
analogous to the parts played by goodness and beauty. It is a spur to 
action, it is “a” value, one of the many valuable matters we seek. But 
note moreover such terms as “genuine,” “actual,” “real,” etc., all of 
which are used over and over again to define the true. “That proposition 
is true to which there corresponds a genuine fact.” “When we have 
discovered what really exists, we have discovered the truth.” These are 
the barest examples. 

It may be that this normative aspect of truth is its most characteristic 
aspect. It may be that in it one could find the criterion of which all 
men are in search. Certainly the pragmatists think so—and so do the 
Fichteans. 



210 University of California Publications in Philosophy. IT o1 * 2 

that no one specific epistemology or psychology is presupposed. 
But when one sees the variety of similar epistemologies, one is 
less hopeful. 

The Stoic, for instance, differed in ethics from Descartes, in 
religion from John Locke, in metaphysics from Jacob Boehme. 
As far as the minor facts of epistemology go there were almost 
as wide divergences. There are the discussions about the 
knowledge of “universals,” about “innate ideas,” about quali¬ 
ties” and the like. But at the base of all the talk lies a common 
agreement, a nucleus of funded opinion held collectively, namely, 
the three presuppositions stated and criticized above (p. 206). 
And besides this is the presupposition that the subject “receives” 
knowledge, which accordingly, whether “representative” or not, 
may be called “affective.” Without an affective theory of 
knowledge, it is difficult to see how one would be likely to believe 
in the truth as the “irresistible” or the “immediately given” or 
the “clear and distinct.” The very names connote an air of 
receptivity, a mind waiting for knowledge and acted upon by it. 

Without going into details, so much may be granted. But if 
it be granted it must at once be seen how very specific the 
epistemology is. If Kant taught philosophy nothing else, he 
taught it the spontaneous nature of knowledge, he taught it that 
knowledge may be considered to be not a reception but an act. 
Whatever the nature of the act, and of course it has many pos¬ 
sible natures, the attitude indicated towards the epistemological 
problem is utterly different from that of the affectivists. It is an 
attitude which would lead men to say, as Kant did say, that the 
mind changes the world in which it finds itself by knowing it; 
it is to lead men to say that the mind creates the world it knows 
by knowing it; it leads men to derive metaphysics from episte¬ 
mology, an affair which no “ affectivist ” would dream of. So 
diverse are these two points of view that to attempt to unite 
them were indeed foolhardy. One, it is true, may be no sounder 
than the other. But both are possible and hence neither is 
utterly fundamental. And if it can be proved that the theory 
of truth which is the consideration of this chapter holds good 
only because of an affective theory, that it does not conform with 


1921] Baas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth. 211 

a spontaneous—or ‘ ‘ functional ’ ’•—theory, then it may at least be 
suspected of too great specificity. 19 

Now that is just what seems to happen. Although it would be 
out of place here, if not impossible, to state every functional 
theory of knowledge and compare it with our present theory of 
truth, it is possible to generalize these theories and thus make 
the comparison. An activistic theory presupposes a mind deter¬ 
minate in character to this extent, namely, that it is capable of 
affecting possible objects of knowledge, “reality,” the “external 
world,” or what you will. The mind may be a Christian soul, 
or a mere mathematical “something”; it is always an agent. 
Since knowledge is active in nature, since the mind ‘ ‘ does some¬ 
thing to the world” when it knows it, it is obvious that to speak 
of the irresistibility of knowledge, is almost meaningless. For 
there is nothing to resist. The world is given not to a receiver 
but to an agent. The subject does not take a world, it makes a 
world. There is no immediately presented. There is only an 
immediately created. And if it is significant to speak of true 
and false knowledge, truth and falsity are properties—using the 
word very loosely 20 —not so much of the experiencing of objects 
as of the production of objects. And speaking very generally, 
indeed, knowledge never is but becomes true. 

These points perhaps prove nothing. They are intended to 
indicate the one fact that truth as the irresistible is after all not 
only connected with a specific epistemology but based upon it. 
Sacrifice an affective theory of knowledge and this criterion of 
truth is well-nigh meaningless. On this account, we maintain 
that it is not sufficiently general. 

Is it catholic: does it account for false and meaningless 
propositions ? 

As countless theorists have pointed out, truth and falsity are 
incompatible properties. That is, in any given system of relation, 

19 a functional theory of knowledge must not in any sense of the word 
be confused with a functional psychology. (See AngeU: ‘‘The Province 
of Functional Psychology,'' Psychological Eevtew, March, 1907, vol. XIV, 
pp. 61 ff.) 

20 So loosely in fact that a relation sustained by an entity may here 
for our purposes be considered a “property” or the characteristic of a 
relation itself. 



212 University of Calif ornia Publications in Philosophy. [VoL 2 

no proposition can be both true and false. Obviously it is 
preferable, if not necessary, to find a criterion which has an 
antithesis, an entity which will in form be a criterion of falsity. 
This need not involve a question of “degrees” of truth. That 
is a question for the application of logic rather than for the 
purely formal side of the matter—if there be one. As far as we 
know, propositions are related to other propositions in one to 
one correspondence such that if one be “true” the other will be 
‘ ‘ false. * ,21 

Is the criterion of irresistibility antithetical to another entity, 
say resistibility? Is clarity antithetical to obscurity? Is im¬ 
mediacy antithetical to mediacy ? If so the adjectives ought not 
to have comparatives; the concepts “more” and “less” ought 
to be meaningless when applied to them. But we find that there 
are degrees of resistibility and of clarity. And no doubt there 
are degrees of mediacy. If this be so, then, although we can 
tell when propositions are true, for there is no quantitative 
aspect to the irresistible or the immediate, or possibly to the 
clear, we can not tell when propositions are false. In other 
words a proposition may be completely true; it can never be 
completely false, a position only in part satisfactory to those 
who believe in “degrees” of truth. Combine this criticism with 
that suggested above, namely that fact shows us the irresistibility 
of some aspects of false propositions—and there was no way 
found to point out what aspect of propositions was to be irresist¬ 
ible—and the theory seems to a considerable extent failing to 
account for falsity. 

Finally can the theory be applied? Does it furnish any 
means of empirically testing our knowledge for its truth and 
falsity? We need take no account of its relativistic character. 
That matter has been amply discussed in our criticism of logical 
hedonism. It can in no way be made to tell against a theory. 

21 Cf. G. E. Moore, “ Truth’’ (Baldwin’s Dictionary ), for something 
approximating the naive view. “ ‘True’ and ‘false,’ ” he says “as 
applied to propositons, denote properties attaching to propositions which 
are related to one another in such a way that every property must be 
either true or false, and that to every true proposition there corresponds 
a false one, and to every false proposition, a true one, differing from it 
only as being its negation.” 



1921] Born: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth. 213 

The real trouble is that the concepts of immediacy and clarity 
and irresistibility are so ill defined. As we have already said 
there is no way of telling what they apply to. Besides that, they 
need criteria of their own. "When can one resist an idea and 
when can one not ? When is an idea clear and when is it obscure ? 
Do we want to find this criterion which will answer our question 
in a further logical analysis of the disputed concepts, or in an 
historical ontogenetic account of the attaining of knowledge? 

When this question is put the whole struggle between “pure 
logic’’ and “psychologism” comes to birth. Is it possible and 
valuable to treat knowledge abstractly as a subject matter to 
which time is irrelevant or must w T e treat it genetically, his¬ 
torically ? When this question is answered, most of our disputes 
will be concomitantly answered. The validity of analysis and 
abstraction are all bound up in it. Most people will admit that 
in affairs which have no temporal character, abstraction and 
analysis are fair enough tools, but a great many of them feel that 
in affairs which “happen,” in which time “makes a difference,” 
they are vicious, indeed falsifying terms. 

We can not attempt to settle the argument here. We must 
simply take a position, make it clear, and leave it to others as a 
weapon. 

Let us assert that we stand against the “ psychologizers ” for 
the following reasons: 

(1) That to talk at all involves an act of abstraction, inasmuch 
as we can not grasp the whole content of our opinions in any set 
of symbols. To do so would be to duplicate the content. 

(2) That discussion is a utilitarian matter aiming at a greater 
understanding of its content, whatever “understanding” may be. 

(3) That whatever achieves this end is in so far forth justified. 

(4) That it is valuable to discuss matters which occur in time. 

(5) That no set of symbols—see (1)—can ever hope to re¬ 
produce completely what it symbolizes, and hence it is vain to 
charge formal or abstract reflection with ‘ ‘falsifying” the concrete 
when it talks about it, and with making the temporal timeless. 22 

22 This is by no means the whole quarrel of the psychologizer and the 
“pure” logician. The psychologizer maintains that since reasoning and 
thinking are psychic functions, they must be studied by the psychologist. 
He adds to this obvious truth the claim that their explanation as psychic 



214 University of California Publications in Philosophy . IT o1 - 2 

To return to our original inquiry, we shall from this stand¬ 
point urge that a logical analysis be given of the meaning of 
immediacy rather than an historical account of it. In other 
words, we are asking what differentiates the immediate from the 
mediate, given both; not at what point does an immediately given 
become mediate. In still other words, we want a definition of 
the Aristotelian or at least of the mathematical type, not of the 
demonstrative type. 

Now such a definition is not forthcoming. Writers on episte¬ 
mology take it for granted that the concept is self-explanatory. 
And yet as a matter of fact the word’s etymology brings out its 
figurative character. In use its meaning has changed until we 
now have immediacy signifying, 

(a) contiguity in any series—preferably time; 

(b) acceptation—actual or desirable—without proof. 

No doubt there are still other meanings. These two are sufficient 
to show its ambiguity. 

But if we accept the first meaning, the difficulties of applica¬ 
tion are innumerable. How is one to localize an event' in time 
to such a degree that it can be determined to be contiguous to 
the other event in time which immediately precedes it? The 
only way to localize an event temporally is to indicate its 
simultaneity with another event—unless the time-series have a 
first member. But whereas that does for historical accounts of 
daily affairs it has by no means the precision which logic would 
like to secure—whether it can or no. It introduces the concept 
of “contemporaneous-ness” which is all very well in analysis 
but hardly suited for application. If to discover the truth of an 
idea we have to trace back its history—always a perilous task— 
and determine other events with which it was synchronous in its 

facts is all there is to be said about them. He then adds the well-known 
words, “There is no saying how we ought to think; we ought to think 
as we do think.’’ 

There is for all this such a phenomenon as valid thinking in distinction 
to ordinary, careless, often invalid thinking. It too can be studied by 
the psychologist. But is he willing to admit the basis of its validity to 
be chimerical? If so, the familiar refutation would be, on what is the 
validity of that opinion based? 

The whole subject is thoroughly discussed in Husserl’s first volume to 
his Logische Untersuchungen, Halle, Niemeyer, A.S., 1900. 



1921 ] Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth. 215 

inception, and then find events temporally contiguous to these, 
and then determine an event temporally contiguous to the 
incipient idea itself and synchronous with the second set of 
events, we may by chance have the good fortune to succeed; but 
if we do it will be by merest chance. It may be a possible pro¬ 
cedure, but hardly an economical one. And then after having 
determined contiguities, how are we to determine the event with 
which the idea itself is to be contiguous? What is its nature? 
Is it another idea, or is it the idea’s “object”? When one speaks 
of the “immediately given,” he should clarify a few of these 
points. He should examine his notion of a mind and see what it 
means to be “given” data. He should then examine his notion 
of time and see just what is involved in contiguity in a continuum. 

If one takes the second meaning of “immediate,” then of 
course the question is begged. For that which is accepted with¬ 
out proof, is accepted because it is held to be true. And if that 
be the case, the issue is practically narrowed down to self¬ 
evidence, which in turn is an obvious petitio principii. 

The difficulty of applying the test of immediacy is attached 
without doubt to almost all other criteria which arise from an 
affective theory of knowledge. Although this can not be proved 
in toto (for who knows all the affective theories?), nevertheless 
there are certain facts of a very persuasive nature which incline 
one towards belief in it. In the main these indicate that proposi¬ 
tions have certain forms and characteristics of their own apart 
from the experiencing of them or of their constituents, namely 
those characteristics which are the subject matter of “pure” 
logic. Inasmuch as many of the propositions we are called 
upon to examine are not and perhaps can not be reduced to 
experiential terms, the first supposition is that their truth is 
determined otherwise than in experiential ways—using “experi¬ 
ence” to mean “primitive sensory experience.” By which I 
mean that there is no reason to suppose that the experiencing 
of true entities—ideas, propositions, knowledge—is uniquely 
characterized by peculiar properties which mark them as true. 
Experience in some sense of the word may have a great deal to 
do with truth, but at this stage of the inquiry there is no reason 
to succumb to the definition of experience mentioned above. 


216 University of California Publications in Philosophy. IT 01 - 2 


RELATIONAL THEORIES OF TRUTH 
(a) The Correspondence Theory 

We have now considered those theories which find the criterion 
of truth in the acquisition of knowledge, in its ontogenesis. They 
have laid especial emphasis upon the subjective aspects of the 
matter. We have not exhausted all such theories. We have 
merely considered representative points of view. 

Another type of truth-theory is that which finds the truth to 
be determined by a relation. Such theories are of two kinds, 
(a) where the relation is one between true entities and “objects',” 
“reality,’’ “the external world,” viz., the correspondence theory; 
(&) where the relation is between true entities themselves, the 
coherence theory. We shall first examine the correspondence 
theory. 

Although this is said to be the usual theory of truth, 23 it is 
very difficult to find a specific account of it given in any book 
of logic or epistemology written by its advocates. It has probably 
been considered self-evident, and suffers from all the obscurity 
of the obvious. 

Taken in its crudest form it says that those ideas are true to 
which there corresponds an existent reality. 24 In the first place 
we must point out the old confusion between “ideas” and 
“propositions”—in use—and in the second place we must clarify 
the meaning of “corresponds” before we can hope to accept this 
theory even for criticism. 

It must I think be admitted that what is ordinarily called an 
“idea,” what is classically called an “idea” is very different 

23 James, W.: Pragmatism, New York, Longmans, 1913, pp. 198 ff. 

“ Truth, as any dictionary will tell you, is a property of certain of 
our ideas. It means their ‘agreement,’ as falsity means their disagree¬ 
ment, with ‘reality.’ Pragmatists and intellectualists both accept this 
definition as a matter of course. They begin to quarrel only after the 
question is raised as to what may precisely be meant by the term ‘ agree¬ 
ment,’ and what by the term ‘reality,’ when reality is taken as some¬ 
thing for our ideas to agree with,” etc. 

24 A still cruder form is found in Bossuet’s Be la Connaissance de Bieu 
et de Soi-Meme, “Le vrai, c’est ce qui est. Le faux, c’est ce qui n’est 
pas, ’ ’ 



I92i] Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth. 217 

from what is called a ‘ ‘ proposition . 9 ’ There may be no such thing 
as what is classically called an “idea,” indeed there probably is 
not, but at any rate the concept can be amplified to an intelligible 
extent, questions of existence to the side. “Ideas” from Demo¬ 
critus to Mill meant little more than states of mind non-relational 
in character. They were of the nature of terms. The mind had 
“ideas” of a horse, of a man, of whiteness, of God, of the state, 
or virtue. These ideas were what we represent by our nouns, 
common, proper, concrete, and abstract. In structure they were 
identical with, or similar to, or symbols of the “objects” of which 
they were the ideas. 25 It was here that myth arose. It was here 
that controversy split the camp. At any rate, all were agreed 
that viewing the mental and the physical as two different realms, 
you had a physical system of things in relation on the one hand 
and a mental realm of correspondent symbols of those things in 
correspondingly symbolic relation. Thus if I saw Brutus kill 
Caesar, what happened was that a physical Brutus killed a 
physical Caesar and in my mind, practically synchronously, an 
ideational Brutus ideationally killed an ideational Caesar. Such 
a parallelism of involuntary symbol w T ith the symbolized soon 
roused comment and we have one school announcing the “un¬ 
reality of one half of the process,” the “physical,” and another 
school later on announcing the “unreality” of the other half of 
the process, the mental. 

Whatever may be the relation of these “ideas” to what they 
stand for, it can not be used as a basis from which to infer 
anything whatsoever about other entities formed by the relations 
of these ‘ ‘ ideas ’ ’ to one another. This has been already pointed 
out. An “idea” may “correspond” to an “object”—indeed it 
would have to in order to be an “idea”—it may have relations 
to other “ideas”; it may have relations to objects of which it is 
not the idea; these facts are all disparate facts: one can not off¬ 
hand assert that properties of one fact will be properties of the 

25 The school which asserted the similarity of ideas and their objects 
was that maintaining the so-called “copy-theory’’ of knowledge. That 
which asserted the symbolic nature if ideas included men like Descartes 
and Locke with a conscious criticism of the copy-theory and a substitution 
of a causal theory—primary qualities (objects) causing secondary quali¬ 
ties (our ideas). The school which asserted the identity of ideas and 
objects included the “subjectivists’’ who were really consistent, e.g., 
Hume. 



218 University of California Publications in Philosophy. IT 01 - 2 

other facts. In fine, if an “idea” so corresponds to an “object” 
that it can be called a ‘ * true idea, ’ ’ there is no reason to suppose 
that propositions in which that “idea” has a place will either be 
true or false. Any theory of knowledge which says that those 
propositions are true whose terms are “true” must be answered 
in this wise. It must also be answered by pointing out that the 
relation in the proposition as well as the total meaning of the 
proposition is unaccounted for. 26 

Having pointed out the confusion between terms and proposi¬ 
tions which exists for the unwary, let us examine the meaning 
of “corresponds.” We must at the outset distinguish between 
correspondence as a type of epistemological truth, the correspond¬ 
ence of the representative theory of knowledge, and correspond¬ 
ence as a type of logical truth, the correspondence between 
propositions and “facts” (Russell). 

It is not at all fashionable in contemporary philosophy openly 
to advocate the representative theory of knowledge, yet there are 
still writers, vowing allegiance to the “Copernican Revolution,” 
who still speak of the “subject-object” relation as if there were 
“things” to be known. To them the problem of knowledge seems 
to take the form, “Does an object change when it is known?” 
or as it is often put, * * Does knowledge make a difference ? ’ ’ This 
question conceals within itself the Democritean tradition in its 
simplest form, for when we speak of the knowledge of “things,” 
and wonder whether knowing them changes them or not, we 
undoubtedly have the feeling that knowledge ought to be a kind 
of transparency on one side of which is an eye, on the other side 
things visible. It is practically a tautology to say so. It is 
evidenced, for instance, by the so-called problem of the reality 
of the external world. How to define the external world without 
assuming the internality of the cognitive subject is a greater 
problem. 27 For the modern Democritean no eidola wing their 

26 If true propositions were propositions whose terms were true or 
true judgments judgments whose component “ideas '> were true, then it 
would seem to follow that an idea of a horse, for instance, in a true 
judgment was somehow different from the idea of a horse in a false 
judgment. 

27 What I should like to say is said much better than I can say it by 
Mr. Dewey in “The Existence of the World as a Logical Problem ’’ 
Essays in Experimental Logic, Chicago, University Press, 1916, ch. XI. pp. 



1921] Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth. 219 


way to the impressionable eye; at times ether vibrations sub¬ 
stitute for them, at times there is a mere ‘ 1 relation. ’ ’ But in 
both eases the object of knowledge is a “thing,” that is, a color, 
a sound, a complex of “ sense-data, ” a self, etc. We hear much 
talk of our knowledge of “the table.” And the table as an 
object of knowledge might well stand as a watchword of the 
whole school. Apparently it is “independent” of mind. And 
yet mind “knows” it. But—question I—how can the mind 
know something which is not mind? The answers are manifold, 

( a ) it can not; (&) it can through “sensations”; (c) it can 
because the table is made up of sense-data; ( d ) it can because it 
has “ideas” of it; etc., etc. The result of all this has been so- 
called “subjective idealism,” “neutral monism,” “epistemolog¬ 
ical dualism.” But all these are probably a result of the initial 
assumption, namely, that experience gives us as the basis of the 
epistemological problem a mind and a world of things, the latter 
affecting the former. 28 This, to repeat, is essentially the starting 
point of Democritus, and the contemporary affectivist has the 
problems of Democritus, viz., how does the world of “things” 
get into the world of mind ? What was fundamentally question¬ 
able about Democritus, as far as a theory of knowledge goes, 
was not his account of the eidola, but his whole conception of 
knowledge as receptive. 

Given a receptive theory of knowledge, it matters not how 
sophisticated its terminology, and you will have atomic ideas 
building up a world. For the main problem, as' we have said, is 
first to get from the physical into the mental and to retain its 
non-illusory character. And when it is proved that the objects of 
certain ideas are non-illusory, and this is proved by an appeal 


28 Mr Woodbridge has described the fallacy involved in this type of 
epistemology, though his immediate interest is psychological “ sensational¬ 
ism ” as follows: “It is one thing to affirm that blue sensed is a sen¬ 
sation, but quite a different thing to affirm that blue as blue is a sensation 
We may speak of the things we have shot as our shots if we are mindful 
why we so designate them, but it would be improper to affirm that a 
partridge is a shot. It is, however, just this sort of impropriety of which 
much psychology has been guilty. It has treated the things we sense as 
if their qualitative characters were themselves sensations some kind of 
mental operation or process, and supposed, consequently, that an analysis 
of 6 the qualities^ in tensities, extensities, etc., of the things.we sense was 
an analysis of consciousness itself.” “Sensations as Conscious, Journal 
of Philosophy, etc., vol. X, p. 604. 



220 University of California Publications in Philosophy. IT°1.2 

to a number of witnesses, the ideas, by their relative permanence, 
by their place in the space-time series, or what not, are true. 
When the ideas of objects are taken seriously and a dualistic 
epistemology results, the theory of truth is our correspondence 
theory. When it is not taken seriously, and a monistic episte¬ 
mology results, the theory of truth is declared to be unim¬ 
portant or impossible. For since an idea of an object is not 
the relation of an object to a mind but is simply the arrange¬ 
ment of certain unanalyzible entities among themselves, there is 
nothing for the complex when known to correspond to. Why 
should not the truth of the objects of knowledge be as ultimate 
as their color? 29 

In a dualistic receptivism the correspondence may be com¬ 
pared to that between symbol and what is symbolized, between 
portrait and sitter. My idea of a mule is a true idea when it 
accurately symbolizes the mule. If an idea be taken as if it were 
an image, it could be rendered more intelligible. Thus an image 
of a mule which represented it with five legs might be called 
false. But to discover the truth or falsity of such a kind of 
idea, one would first require both the mule and the idea that a 
just comparison might be made. The oft-cited refutation of 
such a theory is that we never do have both and hence the 
criterion of truth is inapplicable. 

Because of refinements upon the receptivism of Democritus, 
the correspondence theory is seldom put in this way. The agree¬ 
ment or correspondence which is believed in was very early made 
the matter of the object’s existence or non-existence. The earliest 
formulation of this belief seems to be in Aristotle. “It is not 
because we think truly that you are white, that you are white, 
but because you are white we who say this have the truth.” 

29 Cf. Marvin, W. T.: “The Emancipation of Metaphysics from Epi¬ 
stemology,’; The New Realism, New York, Macmillan, 1912, p. 59 n. 1. 

‘ ‘ Th e question why a proposition is true can mean one of two things the 
first of which admits of an answer and the other does not. A proposition 
is true because some other proposition is true and implies it. But why 
is that other proposition true, why ultimately is anything true that is 
true? Well, the question is as absurd as the question, Why is red red? 
The question asks us to go beyond the ultimate, and its absurdity shows 
us that truth is ultimate and as such is only to be discovered, and is not 
to be ascertained by any device which would make it explicable.” 



1921] Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth. 221 


[ou 7 ap Sea to rjiia ? oUaOcu aXrj6(b<; ere Xev/cov cl av Xev/cos, 
aXXa Sta to ae elvai Xev/cov ryieis ol tyavTCS tovto aXrjdevofiev]. 30 
Such a ‘ ‘ correspondence’ ’ is that of Aquinas, an adaequatio 
intellectus rei; sl and of our contemporary realist, Russell . 32 In 
these opinions no mention is made of a mental state’s actually 
reproducing the existent object. The object—nowadays called 
an “objective”—is a fact rather than a thing. A fact is any 
related number of terms symbolized by words beginning with 
‘ ‘ that. ’ ’ Facts must be assumed to be negative as well as positive. 
“That America was not discovered in 1898” is just as much a 
fact as “That Poe wrote The Bells.” 

The first trouble that arises is in the use of the word “fact.” 
We all know, we are glad to admit that a proposition is true 
when it symbolizes an existent fact; what we are in doubt about, 
here as well as in more naive theories, is how to tell when a 
proposition does symbolize an existent fact. And we demand of 
our theory of truth just that criterion. The sincere man never 
doubts that he is “speaking the truth”; he is quite sure that the 
propositions he phrases have corresponding existent facts. It is 
a great disillusion when the very opposite is pointed out. But 
the determination of facts is in a large measure the work of 
science. Where does it get its criteria; how does it know when 
corresponding facts are non-existent? 

Mr. Russell objects to this argument for his part. He insists 
that truth is a different thing from the criteria of truth . 33 For 


30 Metaphysics, cap. 10, 1051&. I quote from Ross’s translation. 

31 Summa contra Gentiles, ii, 59, 1. 

32 Russell, B.: "On the Nature of Truth,’’ Philosophical Essays, London, 
Longmans, 1910. “Judgment is a relation of the mind to several other 
terms* when these other terms have inter se a ‘corresponding’ relation, 
the judgment is true; when not, it is false.” (p. 178). “We may now 
attempt an exact account of the ‘correspondence’ which constitutes truth. 
Let us take the judgment ‘A loves B.’ This consists of a relation of the 
person judging to A and love and B, i.e., to the two terms A and B and 
the relation ‘love.’ But the judgment is not the same as the judgment 
‘B loves A’; thus the relation must not be abstractly before the mind, 
but must be before it as proceeding from A to B rather than from B to A. 
The ‘corresponding’ complex object which is required to make our judg¬ 
ment true consists of A related to B by the relation which was before us 
in our judgment. ... The judgment is true when there is such a complex 
and false when there is not.” (pp. 183 ff.). See also The Problems of 
Philosophy, p. 201. 

33 y. On the Nature of Truth, pp. 172 ff.; Problems of Philosophy, p. 187. 



222 University of California Publications in Philosophy. IT°l. 2 


the latter are simply marks by which the former are known or 
at least differentiated from other things. By disregarding this 
distinction, he says, philosophers have fallen into many an 
avoidable error. Historically the distinction is akin to the 
scholastic causa essendi and causa cognoscendi. 

Such a distinction is indubitably justifiable. The causes of 
the American Revolution are to be sure other than the causes 
of our knowledge of it. So nitrogen might seem to be different 
from the criteria of nitrogen. But when it comes to a discussion 
of nitrogen we shall first be given several tests for it, by which 
tests we can tell it from hydrogen, for instance. We are told 
that nitrogen is a colorless, tasteless, and odorless gas. Its atomic 
weight is 14.01. When liquefied, it boils at -194°. It is only 
slightly soluble, etc., etc. Hydrogen too is colorless, tasteless, 
odorless. But it is much lighter. We learn that if the atomic 
weight of oxygen is taken as 16, the atomic weight of hydrogen 
is 1.008. It dissolves in water at 15° to the extent of 1.8 volumes, 
etc. 34 And no matter how far we push the matter, we learn of 
one thing only as it is differentiated from another. How other¬ 
wise can we talk? We have but names and signs to deal with in 
discussion. We are thence forced into a treatment of criteria. 
This does not prove that things are merely their differentiae, 
that substantial predicates are always illusory. It simply points 
to the impossibility of making good the claim of discussing an 
entity’s nature without regard to the means of knowing it from 
other entities. When Mr. Russell says that truth is the corre¬ 
spondence of fact and belief and that truth is not thus known 
necessarily, he is willy-nilly telling us how truth is to be known 
or distinguished from other things. If he is not helping us 
select truth, what is the purpose of naming it, denoting it, point¬ 
ing to it, defining it? For all truth may conceivably be any¬ 
thing you choose, it must be something in particular when it is 
defined or discussed. Being something particular is to be differ¬ 
entiated. And to indicate its differentiation is to indicate criteria 
of knowing it. 


34 These simple commonplaces can be found in 
istry. 


any text-book of chem- 



1921] Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth. 223 

To return to our matter in hand, we have no way of telling 
what a “fact” is, or better, of telling when a proposition sym¬ 
bolizes an existent fact and when it does not. False propositions 
moreover assert something. Do they assert then a fact which 
does not exist? 35 For instance are we to assume with Meinong 
that our world of Being may be divided into Subsistence and 
Existence, into the former of which go all impossibles? Such 
a position might be upheld at a venture. But when one had 
accounted for the non-existent by means of the subsistent, there 
would still be the non-subsistent to account for. Granted then 
worlds of super-subsistence—worlds which no one, probably, has 
yet ventured to acclaim—the earlier problem of discovering the 
membership of the facts in which we believe in these worlds is 
still unanswered. It is one thing to maintain that ‘ ‘ Shakespeare 
wrote Sordello” is false because a non-existent or unreal or sub¬ 
sistent “objective” or fact corresponds to it; it is another to tell 
us how we are to find out the non-existence of the fact “that- 
Shakespeare-wrote-tfordeZZo.” Until the recipe is given no one 
will lend a credulous ear to the theory. For it tells him nothing. 
If it were not necessary to ask for this recipe, if we could detect 
the truth without fail, the theory would be thoroughly satisfac¬ 
tory. As things are it is certainly unintelligible. Its hypotheses 
seem plausible enough, but they preclude their own verification. 

Is the correspondence theory self-critical ? If truth is the 
correspondence of propositions with facts, then there ought to be 
a fact corresponding to the correspondence theory, if it be true. 
If it be true, there is undubitably a fact corresponding to it, of 
which it is the description. Yet the theory’s inapplicability 
prevents our discovery of this fact. How are we to know whether 
there is a corresponding fact or not? Where are we to find the 
missing fact which will warrant our assertion of its truth? In 
the long run one must leave the question, saying that the theory 
is self-critical only if the theory is true. 

We have admitted that the theory accounts for false proposi¬ 
tions as well as true propositions—at least in one of its formu¬ 
lations. Whether it accounts for meaningless propositions is 


35 Cf. Montague, W. P.: The New Bealism, pp. 252 ff. 



224 University of California Publications in Philosophy. IT 01 - 2 

more questionable, a situation which is all the stranger when one 
remembers that Mr. Russell himself first called attention to mean¬ 
ingless propositions. True propositions correspond to existent 
facts; false to non-existent facts; to what do meaningless propo¬ 
sitions correspond ? To anything ? In the world of Being, some 
entities exist and some subsist. 36 Among the subsistences are all 
unreal entities, all non-existent entities, such as fictions, impossi¬ 
bilities, and the like. Since to “correspond” means to “sym¬ 
bolize”—is this an unjust interpretation?—we have true proposi¬ 
tions symbolizing existing facts, false propositions symbolizing 
non-existent or subsistent facts'. But meaningless propositions 
symbolize something. If not, how does one know that they are 
meaningless? And if the scheme which differentiates true and 
false be consistently applied, meaningless propositions, a class 
which excludes both true and false, should also be differentiated 
by what they symbolize. But the dilemma into which one now 
falls is destructive. If they symbolize existing facts, they are 
true; and if they symbolize subsistent or non-existing facts, they 
are false; and if they symbolize nothing, they are not proposi¬ 
tions. Yet a propositional function—which is of course neither 
true nor false—has some content, stands for something, is a 
symbol. It may be meaningless in the sense that it is of indeter¬ 
minate truth-value. But it most decidedly “means” something, 
it is significant. If not, why use it? “X is a man” represents 
something; is that something existent or non-existent? One 
does not know. 

The theory moreover does not make any attempt—no cor- 
resondence theory could—to account for the truth of ‘ ‘ practical ’ ’ 
propositions, a failure which Mr. John Dewey has recently 
noted. 37 The hedonistic theory and the irresistibility theory, both 
could if extended include “judgments of practice.” But cor¬ 
respondence theories consider all propositions to be merely his¬ 
torical or descriptive. If one inquires about the truth of “The 
United States should fortify the Panama Canal, ” he is balked at 
once in his attempt to find a correspondent fact. Even granted 

so This is of course not orthodox Russellianism. It is a combination of 
Meinong and Montague and Holt (in the Concept of Consciousness ). 

37 See “The Logic of Judgments of Practice ,’’ Essays in Experimental 
Logic, p. 336. 



1921] Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth. 225 


that a recipe for discovering facts has been perfected, there is 
and can be no fact corresponding to something which symbolizes 
not an “is” but a “should.” Nothing whatsoever is being 
described, nothing literally is being predicted. A “plan of 
action” is being laid down and nothing more. Unless plans of 
action when asserted are peculiarly unsusceptible to the attributes 
“true” and “false,” although all other significant propositions 
are susceptible, something must be done about them. One can not 
simply ignore them and think thus to have explained them. 

A correspondence theory does at first sight seem to have the 
merit of generality. It does not seem to presuppose—especially 
as phrased by Mr. Russell—a specific metaphysic or epistemology. 
This is due to the fact that the Democritean tradition is almost 
an accepted commonplace with most of us. We have however 
already indicated some very specialized and by no means self- 
evident postulates which it requires. As for the Gegenstand- 
theorie which Mr. Russell’s statement seems to require, who will 
admit that it is highly general ? It is not the elementary notions 
of logic or psychology, acceptable to almost anybody—if there 
be such—that are involved, but highly abstruse and very debat¬ 
able notions. The dichotomy of Being into Existence and Sub¬ 
sistence alone is enough to rouse a hue and cry after less 
specificity. 

No one need deny the great difficulty of knowing how little to 
presuppose, how much will follow from a few postulates. In 
discursive thinking of this sort there are innumerable oppor¬ 
tunities for error and inexactness'. Granted that these difficulties 
exist, it is always possible to make an attempt for great exactness, 
particularly in the initial analyses'. It is always possible to try 
out a few postulates and see where they lead. Instead of 
gratuitously assuming that every proposition symbolizes a ‘ ‘ fact, ’ ’ 
that every “idea” stands for an “external” “object,” it would 
be a much more economical, and indeed a more elegant pro¬ 
cedure, to take one postulate—if it be well to call it a postulate— 
“Propositions are signs,” and experiment with that. Such a 
postulate would inevitably lead to a revision of both metaphysics 
and epistemology, but all it presupposes is an inductive study of 
the nature of signs (with the rules of ordinary logic). It does 


226 University of California Publications in Philosophy. ITol. 2 

not presuppose individually isolated “minds’’ receiving impres¬ 
sions from the 11 external world ”; it does not presuppose a world 
of “pure experience”; it does not run behind the subject matter 
bounded by its own interests to discover additional foundation. 

To return to the discussion itself, what are the faults of the 
correspondence theory? 

The faults of the correspondence theory are in brief these: 

( a ) It furnishes no means of applying its own criteria of 
truth. 

(&) The specific epistemologies upon which some of its expres¬ 
sions are based preclude applicability. 

(c) Its lack of applicability precludes self-criticism. 

( d) It gives no account of meaningless and “practical’’ 
propositions. 


(b) Truth as Formal Consistency 

One of the most usual ways of refuting a man’s opinions is 
to point out their inconsistency. It is to take certain of the 
propositions he enunciates and indicate a contradiction among 
them. This method rests upon the “law of contradiction,” 
namely, that two contradictory propositions can not both be 
true in the same system. 38 If a system contains both p and — p, 


38 This is of course not the law of contradiction as usually phrased. 
It is generally taken to describe the comportment of terms not of propo¬ 
sitions, in which case it reads, “It is impossible for the same thing both 
to be a and not to be a; or, a is not not-a.” (I use Creighton’s formula. 
Creighton, J. E.: An Introductory Logic, ed. 3 enlarged and revised, New 
York, Macmillan Company, 1916, p. 350. The reference in Aristotle is 
Metaphysics, Bk. Ill, ch. 4.) There are certain difficulties in this interpre¬ 
tation. To begin with, it is relevant only to subject-predicate proposi¬ 
tions. Propositions which assert other relations, e.g., “Wilkes Booth 
killed Abraham Lincoln,” or “100 is greater than 50,” cannot without 
revision be looked upon as propositions which attribute class-predicates 
to a subject. The contradictory of “Wilkes Booth killed Abraham Lin¬ 
coln” is not “Wilkes Booth killed someone who was not Abraham 
Lincoln,” but “Wilkes Booth did not kill Abraham Lincoln.” This 
merely indicates that one denies the verb (the relation) in a proposition 
not the terms. ’ 

But even if all propositions are subject-predicate there is trouble about 
the meaning of “is.” If “is” means “has the predicate” or “belongs 
to the class,” the law is false. For an entity can belong to the class a 
and also to the class not-a. To avoid this trouble, a theory of * 1 opposing’’ 
predicates and classes is built up. It seems probable, however, that such 
a theory would be made superfluous by our interpretation of the law. 

If “is” means “is identical with” we are led into the tangles which 
Hegel first pointed out. In the proposition, ‘ ‘ The rose is red, ’ ’ he notices 



192!] Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth . 227 


then something is wrong. What is' wrong is not quite clear. To 
point out that two propositions are contradictory is simply to 
state a certain relation which subsists between them; it is not 
to point out which is false and which is true. 

If the presence of contradiction insures the falsity of a 
system its absence may be taken as insurance of its truth. 39 But 
when this is accepted at once a new conception of truth as an 
attribute of propositions is admitted. And that conception is 
that no single proposition is true in isolation from other proposi¬ 
tions ; it is true only by virtue of its place in a system. This is 
one of the most important shifts in emphasis which we have as 
yet encountered. In effect it keeps truth in the realm of logic 
alone, abandoning epistemology and psychology. If there were no 
knowledge, if there were no world to be known, if there were 
nothing but the symbols called propositions, there would still be 
truth. No matter what the genesis of these symbols, no matter 
what their place in the life of the individual, their truth is 
determined by their relation to other symbols. It is a question 
whether this detachment is not suicidal. 

In considering this theory of truth we must first note the 
characteristics of systems of propositions. A system of proposi¬ 
tions is the class of propositions implied by any given proposi¬ 
tions, which may be called the postulates of the system. To 

an identification of two things which are different. This impels him to 
say that all propositions assert identity in difference, a contradiction 
which he justifies by his theory of ontological negation. (Hegel, G. W. F.: 
Wissenschaft der LogiTc, Berlin, Duncker and Humblot, 1841, pp. 26 ff., in 
particular p. 32. Cf. Bosanquet, B.: Principle of Individuality and Value, 
London, Macmillan & Co., 1912, pp. 223 ff.) Again in the proposition, 
«* This horse is swift, ’ ’ you have an assertion of the identity of a universal 
1 ‘ swift’’ with a particular “this horse,’’ an assertion which in its turn 
leads to the doctrine of the “concrete universal.” (See Boyce, J.: Spirit 
of Modern Philosophy, Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin Co., 
Appendix C, for an account, put together from the many references in 
Hegel’s works, of the “concrete universal.”) 

In view of these facts we prefer to treat the “law of contradiction” 
as a law not of terms but of propositions. 

The words “in the same system” above are especially important. 
Consistency gives us no way of telling which of two propositions in 
isolation is true. 

39 This is not a case of simply converting a universal proposition as that 
case is ordinarily understood. The proposition here in question is a 
definition and as such its subject and predicate should be interchangeable. 
A definition is of the form “All S is PQ.” To convert it we can read 
“PQ is S.” So here “Falsity is a system-which-is-not-consistent”; 
“The system-which-is-consistent is not-Falsity.” 



228 University of California Publications in Philosophy . [T°L 2 


insure the system’s consistency, the postulates must be mutually 
non-contradictory, since it is assumed that if two propositions 
are consistent, their implications are consistent. For the sake of 
elegance, the postulates of a system must be independent, one of 
them must not be inferred from another. Examples of such 
systems are the propositions which make up Euclidean geometry. 
If these propositions contain no inner contradictions, then the 
system is “true.” 40 And this, says the consistency theory, is all 
the test of truth we have. When we investigate single propo¬ 
sitions, we may best say that if a proposition can generate a con¬ 
sistent system of propositions, then it is true. 41 

In the actual dealing with propositions, we find that the test 
is more negative. “Those propositions are true which do not 
imply their contradictories.” Whether the apparent negativity 
of such a criterion is objectionable, we shall not discuss here. 
But it is interesting to see that one can never quite tell once and 
for all whether a proposition is wholly true. ‘ ‘ So far, ’ ’ we may 
say, “it has not been proved false. In time we may see that by 
carrying its implications out further a contradiction appears; 
but no contradiction appears at this point. For all we know it 
is true, and yet it may later on be proved to be false. Had we 
the exact postulates by which it is implied, we could examine 
them for independence and consistency. But in most cases we 
have not. And so wait we must.” 


40 Mr. Russell has given this account of the proof of a logical system. 
“The proof of a logical system ,’* he says, “is its adequacy and its 
coherence. That is, (1) the system must embrace among its deductions 
all those propositions which we believe to be true and capable of deduc¬ 
tion from logical premises alone, though possibly they may require some 
slight limitation in the form of an increased stringency of enunciation; 
and (2) the system must lead to no contradictions, namely in pursuing 
our inferences we must never be led to assert both p and not-p, i.e., both 
“l-.p” and “K-p” cannot legitimately appear.” (Whitehead, A. N., and 
Russell, A. W. B.: Principia Mathematica, Cambridge, 1910, vol. I, p. 13.) 

If this be an accurate account of the matter, and if “proof” is a test 
for truth, though that is, to be sure, a debatable point, it is clear that 
formal consistency as truth is, as we say above, a reduction of truth to 
something purely “logical,” something in the world of symbols alone. 
It is interesting to compare the truth one gets from formally correct 
syllogisms whose premises are wilfully false. 

41 As far as we know the only propositions implied by a single propo¬ 
sition are those which assert that any entity related to an entity symbol¬ 
ized by the terms in the given proposition is related to an entity which 
has the relation asserted in the given proposition. For example, the 
proposition which asserts that x is related to y implies that any entity 



1921] Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth. 229 


This is a good account in many respects of just what happens 
to our knowledge. Propositions which we begin with as true, turn 
out to be false. Knowledge, as many a thinker has pointed out, 
progresses by refuting itself. But it is a question whether the 
refutation goes on quite as the consistency theory demands. The 
world was proved to be round, for instance, not by demonstrating 
the self-contradiction in terrestrial flatness', but by sailing 
round it. 

When one considers an instance like this, and reflects upon 
its significance, he sees characteristics of truth which he neglected 
before. The most important of these is the place of experimenta¬ 
tion. If truth is simply a matter of consistency, why bother to 
experiment ? Why not take any postulates and make your deduc¬ 
tions from them? Or, to phrase the question differently, “Why 
was it necessary to sail round the world to prove that it was not 
flat?” 

One can build up a perfectly consistent system round the 
proposition, “The earth is flat.” And yet one can not sail round 
a flat earth. But what difference does that make so long as 
consistency has been achieved? 

The objection to our criticism, that one of the implications of 
the proposition, “The world is flat,” is “The world can not be 
circumnavigated,” and that since the world can be circum¬ 
navigated, the proposition implies its own contradictions, would 


related to x is related to an entity which is related by the given relation 
to y. “George Washington married Martha Custis” implies that “The 
friends of George Washington are the friends of a man who married 
Martha Custis.” (Cf. Royce, J.: “Some Psychological Problems Empha¬ 
sized by Pragmatism, 1} Popular Science Monthly, Oct., 1913, p. 403.) It will 
be noticed that all such propositions will be consistent. There may, to be 
sure, be other types of system implied by single propositions which are 
not by their nature necessarily true. 

This principle of deduction which was first, I believe, noticed by De 
Morgan (“On the Symbols of Logic /* Transactions of the Cambridge Philo¬ 
sophical Society, 1850, p. 85), does not in the strictest sense of the word 
indicate implication by a single proposition. De Morgan’s example is ‘ 1 The 
owner of a horse is the owner of an animal. The friend of the owner of a 
horse is the friend of an owner of an animal. ’ * But this before it is known 
to be valid reasoning must be seen to conceal a “major premise” in the 
person of the methodological axiom stated above. Without that axiom 
no implication would be possible. Such axioms may be held to be mere 
verbal formulae of inferences which are actually made without reference 
to them. Such an opinion may be perfectly valid; the important point is 
thht the cases described by the axiom have identity of form which war¬ 
rants generalization. The genetic priority of particular proposition or 
general proposition need not disturb us. 



230 University of California Publications in Philosophy. IWoL 2 

never probably be seriously offered. 42 For it is on the face of 
it untenable. The contradiction which is the evidence of falsity 
—if the consistency theory is itself consistent—must arise within 
the system and the contradictory proposition in this case arises 
from without, from experimentation. The system of propositions 
itself is perfectly consistent. 

One might say that every proposition “implies existence/’ 
Aside from the dangers incurred on the part of universal propo¬ 
sitions, this notion would not be any too helpful. The proposition, 
for instance, “Sugar makes coffee sweet’’ if it “implied exist¬ 
ence” ought to be verified by “experience.” We ought to be 
able to put sugar into coffee and find it sweet. But the fact that 
we can thus act and experience is certainly different from the 
proposition which symbolizes a fact which incites us to make the 
test. A proposition is either different from its subject matter, or 
there is no such thing as logic. The fact, then, that the world 
can not be circumnavigated is a different entity from the propo¬ 
sition, “The world can not be circumnavigated.” Without going 
into metaphysics, one can see that in a world where propositions 
were facts, such a phenomenon as “the method of trial and 
error” would be impossible. For there could be no error. Once 
and for all propositions are symbols and facts are what they 


42 A. H. Loyd says that “the ordinary belief’ ’ about truth is “con¬ 
formity to an external reality, to things, so to speak, out there, and com¬ 
plete consistency with self; or, more concisely, external conformity and 
internal consistency.” (A. H. Loyd, “Conformity, Consistency, and 
Truth: A Sociological Study,” Journal of Philosophy, etc., vol. X, 1913, 

p. 282.) 

This “ordinary belief” attempts to preserve all the benefits of the 
consistency-theory together with those of the correspondence-theory. No 
doubt its supporters would answer the question raised in the text by 
calling upon “correspondence with fact” (i.e., “conformity” with fact) 
for aid. Until they demonstrate an identity between the two relations 
of propositions, however, they can hardly legitimately use one to sup¬ 
plant the other. At first sight they would appear vastly different. Cer¬ 
tainly they have been different historically. Their cooperating is interest¬ 
ing but not very illuminating. 

Cf. also Jacobson, E.: “Relational Account of Truth,” Journal of 
Philosophy, etc., vol. VII, p. 253. “ To be true is, with reference to some 
determinate system of relations, to designate certain relations which are 
implied by the system” (p. 257). “The relational definition is very 
sharply to be distinguished from the description of truth as mere ‘ system¬ 
atic coherence’ .... The Ptolemaic theory ... is quite systematic and 
yet is held to be false. The real reason for this is that internal consistency 
does not mdke the thiny that has it true. It requires consistency with 
external things for that, and then the thing is true only with reference to 
those external things.” (p. 258. Italics in the text.) 



i92i] Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth. 231 

attempt to symbolize—be “symbols” and “facts” whatever yon 
please. Contradiction is here a property of symbols—I do not 
say it has no ‘ 1 factual ’ ’ analogy—and can not subsist between a 
symbol and a not-symbol. 

What the consistency theory seems to overlook in its very 
detachment is what the correspondence theory might call “the 
objective reference” of propositions. This objective reference 
may not be, and, as this paper will argue, probably is not, the 
“world of objects.” We shall maintain that it is bound up in 
the nature of meaning and can be discovered only through an 
examination of meaning. Forgetting that for the present, it 
is only by a recognition of the importance of the objective refer¬ 
ence that a theorist can hope to save his thinking from mere 
triviality. If the building of systems is the mere deduction of 
consequences from amusing postulates, if it is a game, then truth 
may very well be the non-contradiction of the consequences, when 
certain rules are obeyed in phrasing and selecting postulates. 
Truth, then, is an esthetic quality. And, as so many writers say, 
it is purely relative to the postulates chosen, what propositions 
will be true. Moreover the choosing of postulates is a purely 
arbitrary matter. Thus the non-Euclidean geometries in their 
perfect consistency are said to be quite as “true” as Euclidean 
geometry. Every fact, we are told, which is explained by 
Euclidean geometry can be equally explained by non-Euclidean. 

And yet is the choosing of postulates and indefinables as 
arbitrary as it seems? Is any proposition as good as any other 
proposition for a postulate? If so why should a man choose P, 
rather than its contradictory ? The answer may be simply to see 
what it implies. True enough. But let us assume a postulate 
which is ordinarily called “false,” “Matter is continuous.” 
Will this ever contradict itself or will it contradict other postu¬ 
lates and theorems which we know to be “true”? Only the 
former is a valid objection on the part of the consistency theory. 
As soon as “facts” are brought in, or already proved theorems 
from other systems, the consistency theorist has given up his 
standpoint. It is tacitly to admit another criterion of truth than 
that of consistency. 


232 University of California Publications in Philosophy. IW°l. 2 


Whereas it must not be forgotten that the consistency theory 
holds only systems to be true, there is a sense of the word in 
which single propositions can be said to be true. The most 
hardened formalist clings to non-contradiction because “true” 
propositions imply “true” propositions. Their truth is carried 
on through the channels of implication. It is thus that the 
premises of Aristotelian logic can be called “true,” or the postu¬ 
lates in contemporary logic. Obviously such “truths” are not 
the concomitant of consistency. For conclusions are known to 
be true when premises are true; premises may be either true or 
false without respect to their conclusions. Thus it is not nonsense 
to inquire into the truth or falsity of the very postulates of a 
system since the “process of inference” 43 guarantees the truth 
only of what is implied by the true. 

In what sense of the word are postulates true or false ? White- 
head and Russell’s primitive proposition *1.1, “Anything implied 
by a true elementary proposition is true,” for instance, is of 
course nowhere proved in the Principia Mathematical It is 
purposely an undemonstrated proposition. But it has meaning 
and whether susceptible to proof or not, whether self-evident 
or not, it is liable to truth or falsity. Again take the equation, 
the instantaneous velocity of a body is equal to the product of 
the acceleration and the time; 45 or the first Ptolemaic postulate 

43 See Whitehead and Russell: Principia Mathematica, Cambridge, 1910, 
vol. I, pp. 7 and 9, for the “implicative function’’ and “the process of 
inference.” 

44 The word “prove” might much better be used in the sense of “to 
test” as it once was, than in the sense of “ to establish firmly” as it now 
is. (Cf. Sidgwick: The Process of Argument, London, A. and C. Black, 
1893, p. 90 n.) For all that is done in any proof is to apply certain 
methodological axioms to given propositions and see what happens. As 
far as establishing anything goes, if the propositions are cases in point, 
their “truth” is already established and nine times out of ten in formal 
reasoning all one does is to substitute an a for an x or to assert that 
members of a class have certain properties which make them members of 
the class. Thus most formal reasoning becomes as much a petitio principii 
as the syllogism-according-to-Mill. 

What the consistency-theory does is to look for truth in this process 
of proof. It reasons that if proving is establishing the truth, the truth 
must be found in the very process. It then quietly assumes that truth is 
the process and nothing else, forgetting (a) that the process is worthless 
unless it directs the flow of already known truth by linking a proposition 
of unknown value to a true proposition, and (h) that the last term even 
in a continuous series is not the series. Wherefor a house is not the 
swivel-chair in the contractor’s office. 

45 Mach, E.: Science of Mechanics, tr. by J. J. McCormack, Chicago, 
Open Court Publishing Company, 1907, p. 269. 



i92i] Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth. 233 


as given by Tannery, “The sky is spherical and moves as a 
sphere”; 46 or Yeblen and Young’s first assumption for projective 
geometry, “If A and B are distinct points, there is at least one 
line containing both A and B”; 47 there is once more the possi¬ 
bility of a doubt; they are—nowadays at any rate—open to ques¬ 
tion ; it would not be nonsense, though it might be futility, to ask 
about their truth or falsity. With such typical examples before 
one, it would be useless to say that postulates in themselves are 
not true nor false, that it is only the system which can be thus 
described, since postulates, however arbitrarily chosen, have 
meaning and the very fact that they are not gibberish insures 
their claim to truth. It is perfectly legitimate to write postulates 
without the sign of assertion, to denote that they are mere 
assumptions, but what is assumed in each instance is the truth 
of the postulates. 

This truth, to reiterate, may be a quite different kind of truth 
from that of theorems. What kind of truth is it? According 
to the process of inference, it is that kind which guarantees the 
truth of theorems. It is because postulates are true that theorems 
are true. As for mere consistency, when one sees how readily a 
false proposition will yield a consistent system, i.e., a system 
without contradiction, he begins to realize that the kind of truth 
which men are seeking is not the truth of systems so much as the 
truth of postulates. 48 


46 Tannery, P.: Eecherches sur I’Histoire de l’Astronomie, Paris, Gau¬ 
thier-Villars & Fils, 1893, p. 88. 

47 Veblen, O., and Young, J. W.: “A Set of Assumptions for Projec¬ 
tive Geometry,’’ American Journal of Mathematics , vol. 30, 1908, p. 348. 

48 Schiller, F. S.; Humanism, London, Macmillan & Co., 1912, ed. 2, 
p. 47. “To define truth as systematic is at once to raise the question of 
systematic falsehood. For false assumptions also manifestly tend to com¬ 
plete themselves in a system of inferences, to cohere together, to assimi¬ 
late fresh facts, and to interpret them into conformity with themselves, 
in short, to assume all the logical features that are claimed for ‘truth.’ ” 

If we take a proposition which is generally accepted to be false, with¬ 
out regard to the reason of its falsity, “Homer was born in 1898,” for 
example, by virtue of the axiom, “Whatever is related to an entity 
which is related to other entities, is related to the entities which are 
related to the given entity,” we can construct a system of propositions 
which is perfectly consistent. Homer was born in 1898 implies that 
Homer was alive during the Spanish-American War, that he might have 
had a father who took part in the war, that whatever is likely to have 
happened to a person born in 189’8 might very well have happened to 
Homer. By the introduction of new propositions we can introduce a 
variety of terms into our system. But whatever falsity arises will arise 



234 University of California Publications in Philosophy. [Vol. 2 

That postulates have a sort of “standard’’ truth seems to be 
admitted by those who maintain the “ relativity ’ 9 of truth, that 
what a man holds to be true depends upon his assumptions. 
Assumption P x will often imply different propositions from 
assumption P 2 . And the man who assumes P x will have beliefs 
different from those of the man who assumes P 2 . But what each 
assumes is the truth of his assumptions, and because he assumes 
them to be true, he is willing to accept their implications. The 
question such a relativist must answer is why his assumptions 
are true. 

To sum up, then, it is asserted that truth arises with con¬ 
sistency. But postulates themselves are true. And propositions 
which are either true or false can generate consistent systems. 
The truth of postulates can not be consistency because postulates 
do not occur within a system, i.e., two contradictory postulates 
are interchangeable in any system without loss of consistency. 
Consequently the truth of postulates, if different from that of 
theorems, is w T ell worth investigating, inasmuch as it guarantees 
the truth of systems. 

It must be noted at this point that 

(a) Two false propositions may be consistent, e.g., 

1. William James wrote Canterbury Tales. 

2. The domestic cat has six legs. 

(b) Two false propositions may be inconsistent. 

1. The moon is made of green cheese. 

2. The moon is made of maple sugar. 

(c) A true proposition and a false proposition may be consistent. 49 

1. Cambridge is in Massachusetts. 

2. It rains all the time. 

from the relation the propositions—proved or assumed—bear to “facts” 
or “what we know to be true,” and not from the relation they bear to 
one another. The mere proposition “Homer was born in 1898” is no 
more productive of an inconsistent set of propositions, than the proposi¬ 
tion, “Homer was born c. 1000 b.c.” There is no formal difference in 
these propositions. Why should the accepted one be thought more fertile 
in consistency than the rejected one? 

49 In the propositions of “c,” “true” is used to denote propositions 
which nobody would dispute, which everybody would accept as true. This 
does not presuppose a theory of truth as it might seem. It simply takes 
a given subject-matter—and subject-matters are given—and if it be no 



i92l] Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth . 235 


( d ) Two true propositions may be inconsistent. 50 

1. Through any point, one and only one line is parallel to a 
given line (Euclid). 

2. Through any point there are two lines parallel to a given 
line, each meeting the line at infinity (Lobatchewsky). 51 

If these observations are accurate, consistency and truth are 
perfectly irrelevant matters. The objection to observation 
that the two propositions are taken from two different systems and 
hence present no fair criticism is untenable. Two true proposi¬ 
tions from the same system would always be consistent, since all 
that is meant by their truth and their being in the same system 
is their consistency. 52 . Observation “d” is indeed crucial, since 
it is the truth of the postulates which generate the system that 
we are investigating. It would seem that consistency as a test 
of truth ought to hold as regards all propositions, i.e., all true 
propositions ought to be consistent, or that discussions of truth 
ought to center about the truth of postulates. But the former is 
certainly not the case. The truth of theorems is almost always 
held to be a relative matter by those who maintain the consistency 
theory. And the truth of postulates certainly is not due to 
consistency, inasmuch as (see above) between two contradictory 
postulates there is often no preference whatsoever. 

Truth as formal consistency is not self-critical. For the 
axioms and postulates assumed by it are on no other ‘ ‘ plane ’ ’ of 
validity than axioms and postulates in general. There is no way 

wrong selection, the subject-matter must be explained by the theory. So 
here we take a proposition which mystic, hedonist, consistentist, coherentist 
would accept as true, and point out a certain relation it sustains. It is 
the work of the consistentist either to deny that the propositions given are 
true, or to explain why they are true. The discipline involved—that of 
the limitation of subject-matters—is of no strict concern to us here. It 
puts the question, “How far does a question answer itself?” “How does 
one know that x is a 0 when he is investigating the ‘ nature’ of 0?” 

so “True” is here used in the sense of the consistency theory, i.e., 
propositions occurring in consistent systems. 

si I follow the phraseology of Whitehead and Russell, “Geometry,” 
Encyclop. Brit., ed. 11 (VI), p. 727. 

52 Some modification of this statement might be desirable. By “all 
that is meant by their being in the same system is their consistency,” 
I desire to indicate the necessary consistency of propositions in the same 
system. An “inconsistent system” is a contradiction in terms, accord¬ 
ing to the accepted meaning of 11 system.* ’ 



236 University of California Publications in Philosophy. [ Vo1 * 2 

of knowing but that their very contradictories would generate an 
equally consistent system. 

The theory is, however, remarkably free from foreign assump¬ 
tions; it is not prejudiced by metaphysical or psychological 
foundations. It is busied only with the logical definition of truth, 
and as far as ordinary logic goes, as far as our knowledge of 
propositions in relation to one another helps us, we can scarcely 
hope for more than formal consistency affords. The question is 
whether formal logic helps us at all. The question is whether 
truth must not be an indefinable for logic; whether truth is not 
a concept prior to logic, since all logic uses truth in its initial 
steps. This may be acceptable if one does not go too far, to the 
point of saying that what is logically prior is indefinable, where 
1 ‘ indefinable ’ ’ means 11 indescribable. ’ ’ 

If propositions which would ordinarily be stamped as false 
are to be justified as true by this theory, the only false proposi¬ 
tions would be self-refuting propositions, propositions whose 
assertion implies their denial. This gives us a standard for 
falsity, but it grants the subsistence of very few, if any, false 
propositions. A proposition such as “there is no truth’’ is self- 
refuting, since it itself is held to be true. It refutes itself how¬ 
ever not by generating inconsistency, but by appealing to fact. 
The dialectic of the situation runs thus: No proposition is true. 
But all propositions claim to be true. Therefore this proposition 
claims to be true. But in claiming to be true, it refutes itself, 
for it says that no proposition is true. If, on the other hand, it 
is self-descriptive, then it is false, and some propositions are true. 
The appeal to fact of which we speak may not be audible at the 
outset. It occurs as soon as we bring in the proposition, “All 
propositions claim to be true.” This proposition is in no sense 
of the word implied by our given proposition. It is an axiom 
required for all thinking, or a description of the comportment 
of all propositions. But it is brought in from without; it is not 
a consequence of the proposition “No proposition is true.” It 
is, in fine, simply a proposition which we accept—for very good 
reasons of course—to be true, no matter what our definition of 
true ’ ’ may be. It is highly likely that no proposition is formally 


1921 1 Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth . 237 


self-refuting. The reason for believing this is that an isolated 
proposition has implicative fertility by virtue of some assumed 
methodological axiom. By itself it would imply nothing. 53 I do 
not say that we must not employ self-refutation, but we must 
realize what it means. It is in the main a non-formal affair, an 
invocation of a something “which we know to be ‘true’ ” as an 
aid to our inferences. So much for falsity. As for meaningless 
propositions, the consistency theory can say nothing on that 
score. The very conception of meaning is foreign to it. 

How we are to apply this test of truth is the greatest mystery 
of all. We are asked whether Columbus discovered America in 
1492 or 1498 and we are baffled. Formally both generate con¬ 
sistent systems, revising our usual opinions to be sure, but not 
contradicting themselves. The process of applying this test is like 
the process of cross-examination: the result discovered is that 
someone is lying. But the activity of knowledge is out for a more 
definite end than that; it wants to discover not only that some¬ 
thing is false but what is true. 

In testing judgments of practice it is useless. Whether the 
present administration should be reformed or not, for example, 
is irrelevant to logic. For in such a case truth is seen to be con¬ 
cerned with the particular content of the particular proposition 
and is seen to be no matter of its formal properties. We should 
be able to test a practical proposition by confining our attention 
to the proposition itself. If logic has to any degree the generality 
of mathematics, questions arising from the particularity of 
certain propositions have no place in it. 

(c) Coherence in a “Significant Whole ” 54 

The difficulty of formal consistency as a test of truth is that 
since all propositions have a place in some system, if only in one 
generated by themselves, all propositions are true. To many 

63 See note 41. 

54 This section considers what are usually called “absolutistic” theories 
of truth. As representatives of this view I have chosen Hegel primarily, 
for he is after all the founder and supreme exponent of absolute idealism, 
Royce, Bosanquet, Bradley, and Joachim. These men are all absolutists 
and idealists, and whereas their theories of the Absolute’s nature may 
differ, they are in a certain accord. Royce, it is true, with his voluntaristic 



238 University of California Publications in Philosophy. fT°l. 2 


thinkers this result would be enough to effect the abandoning of 
the postulates which gave rise to it. But to other thinkers it is 
merely a sign of incomplete thinking, and an impulse to carry the 
implications on until the contradiction is resolved. 

All propositions are true, they say, and all propositions are 
at the same time false. But their truth is only a fractional truth, 
or, in popular language, a “relative” truth. 55 Total truth, truth 
which is self-sufficient, can not be found in isolated propositions 
by themselves. It is only found in coherent systems, in the 
coherent system which is the Absolute. 56 . The Absolute System 
is naturally never comprehended by a human mind ; 57 it is known 
only by the Absolute Experience. It is the Absolute Experience 
made self-conscious. The character of this experience is such 
that (a) its content is all that is, and (b) it is known by itself. 
Such an entity can be found only in a monistic idealistic meta¬ 
physic. It must be borne in mind in examining the notion that 
truth is still said to arise only through consistency and that 
provided a system can be found such that it includes all possible 
systems, that system will be ‘ ‘ the Truth. ’ ’ Since all propositions 


interpretation of knowledge, with its implications, with his ‘ 1 reflective method 
(see The World and the Individual, vol. I, p. xi; also “The Problem of Truth 
in the Light of Recent Discussion in Wm. James, etc., pp. 242 ff.) which 
Bosanquet almost explicitly rejects (Principle of Individuality and Value, 
pp. 46 ff.), with his doctrine of interpretation, is the most original and 
independent of the group, and by his own description of himself owes as 
much to Schopenhauer as to Hegel (Preface to The Problem of Christianity, 
p. xiii). And yet one has only to read his “The Possibility of Error ’ 1 (The 
Religious Aspect of Philosophy, ch. XI) to realize how close he is to Hegel 
in his theory of truth. This is the basic uniformity of these men. I have 
tried to express it, without undue distortion, I hope, in the general state¬ 
ment of what I call, “coherence in a significant whole.” 


ss y. Bradley, F. E.: Appearance and Reality, ed. 2, London, Sonnen- 
schein, 1908, pp. 362—63. “ There will be no truth which is entirely true, 
just as there will be no error which is totally false. With all alike if 
taken strictly, it will be a question of amount, and will be a matter of 
more or less. Our thoughts, certainly for some purposes, may be taken as 
wholly false, or again as quite accurate; but truth and error, measured by 
the absolute, must each be subject always to degree. ...” 

56 “The words, This is true, or This is false, mean nothing, we declare 
unless there is the inclusive thought for which the true is true, the false¬ 
hood false. No barely possible judge, who would see the error if he were 
there, will do for us. He must be there, this judge, to constitute the 
error. . . . Our thought needs the Infinite Thought in order that it may 
get, through this Infinite judge, the privilege of being so much as even 
an error.” Royce, J.: “The Possibility of Error,” Religious Aspect of 
Philosophy, Boston and New York, Houghton, Mifflin, 1885, p. 427. 

57 V. Joachim, H. H.: The Nature of Truth, Oxford, Clarendon Press 
1906, pp. 78 ff. 



1921] Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth. 239 


belong to the system, all propositions are true; the distinction 
which we make between truth and falsity rests upon some pecu¬ 
liarly human difficulty, such as the confusion between “ appear¬ 
ance” and “ reality’’ or upon our point of view or the purpose 
we have in mind. It would not be unfair to say, I think, that 
Truth is identified with Reality. 58 Hence it is absolutely deter¬ 
minate. Since the human mind is not all Reality, human 
knowledge cannot properly be said to be true. If truth is only 
relatively determined, the standard varies according to the 
theorist. 

It is well now to note the main presupposition of absolutism. 
It is that whatever the truth is it must be self-sufficient, a whole. 59 

58 Cf. Bradley, F. E.: “On Appearance, Error, and Contradiction,’ ’ 
Mind, 1910, n.s., XIX, p. 158. “Truth demands at once the essential differ¬ 
ence and identity of ideas and reality. It demands (we may say) that 
the idea should in the end be reconstituted by the subject of the judgment 
and should in no sense whatever fall outside. But the possibility of such 
an implication involves, in my view, a passage beyond mere truth, to 
actual reality, a passage in which truth would have completed itself 
beyond itself.” See also Mr. Bradley’s other article, “On Some Aspects 
of Truth,” Mind, 1911, n.s., XX, p. 331, where he reiterates this point and 
adds that it is impossible to know in detail how all this happens. 

See also Bosanquet, B.: Logic, vol. II, p. 263, n. “a”; ibid. bk. II, ch. 
IX, pp. 266 ff., pp. 291 ff.; ch. X, pp. 303 ff. 

59 Bradley: Appearance and Reality, pp. 363, 364. “Truth must exhibit 
the mark of internal harmony, or again, the mark of expansion and all- 
inclusiveness. And these two characteristics are diverse aspects of a 
single principle ... to be more or less true, and to be more or less real, 
is to be separated by an interval, smaller or greater, from all-inclusiveness 
or self-sufficiency. Of two given appearances the one more wide, or more 
harmonious, is more real. It approaches nearer to a single, all-containing, 
individuality. ...” 

V. also Bosanquet, B.: The Principle of Individuality and Value, p. 41. 
‘ c To doubt is to assert a ground for doubting, and . . . the tendency of 
the logical progression, however far from fulfillment, is ‘to leave no room 
for doubt’; that is to say, to organize experience in such a way that at 
whatever point you may try to pick up a positive content and push it 
against the system, you will be shown that the effort is anticipated, and 
only takes you back into the system itself. This is to appeal to the 
principle that truth or reality is the whole. According to this, the reason 
why you cannot contradict the truth is that it leaves outside it, no iroD <ttG> 
on which a contradiction could be grounded.” Cf. p. 306. 

Though it is always misleading to isolate fragments of Hegel’s own 
writings, it is worth running the risk for illustrative purposes. That truth 
is a whole, “the whole,” may be found as the thesis in the Preface to 
his Phenomenology (WerTce, vol. II, Berlin, Duncker & Humblot, 1832), a 
thesis of which the whole work is the proof. “Das Wahre ist das 
Ganze,” he says in a much-quoted paragraph (p. 16). “Das Ganze aber 
ist nur das durch seine Entwicklung sich vollendende Wesen. Es ist 
von dem Absoluten zu sagen, dass es wesentlich Besultat, dass es erst 
am Ende das ist, was es in Wahrheit ist; und hierin eben besteht seine 
Natur, Wirkliches, Subjekt, oder Sichselbst werden zu sein. . . . Dass das 



240 University of California Publications in Philosophy. tT°l. 2 


Such an assumption may turn out to be justified but it can not be 
denied that it is an assumption. It has been pointed out in a 
note to an earlier chapter that even the self-sufficient depends 
upon a relational structure. So that whatever harm accrues 
from the relationally determined is not avoided in an absolutism. 
One may of course with Bradley deny the 4 ‘reality ’ f of rela¬ 
tions, 60 in which case it would seem that the absolute was one in 
the sense of “the undivided and indivisible .’’ Such an entity 
would, I suppose, be self-sufficient. But to prove the possibility 


Wahre nur als System wirklich, oder dass die Substanz wesentlich Subjekt 
ist, ist in der Vorstellung ausgedriickt, welche das Absolute als Geist 
auspricht,—der erhabenste Begriff, und der der neueren Zeit und ihrer 
Beligion angehort. Das Geistige allein ist das Wirkliche; es ist das Wesen 
oder Ansichseiende,—das sich Verhaltende und Bestimmte,—das Ander- 
sein und Fursichsein—und in dieser Bestimmtheit oder seinem Aussersich- 
sein in sich selbst Bleibende;—oder es ist an und fur sich.—Diess Anund- 
fiirsichsein aber ist es erst fur uns oder an sich, es ist die geistige Sub¬ 
stanz. Es muss diess auch fur sich selbst,—muss das Wissen von dem 
Geistigen und das Wissen von sich als dem Geiste sein, d. h., es muss sich 
als Gegenstand sein, aber ebenso unmittelbar als aufgehobener, in sich 
reflektirter Gegenstand. Er ist fur sich nur fur uns, insofern sein 
geistiger Inhalt durch ihn selbst erzeugt ist, insofern er aber auch fur 
sich selbst fiir sich ist, so ist dieses Selbsterzeugen, der reine Begriff, ihm 
zugleich das gegenstandliche Element, worin er sein Dasein hat; und er 
ist auf diese Weise in seinem Dasein fiir sich selbst in sich reflektirter 
Gegenstand.—Der Geist, der sich so entwickelt als Geist weiss, ist die 
Wissenschaft. . . . ” (pp. 19-20). Cf. op. tit., pp. 36 ff. 

Royce’s statement of the belief that the truth is a whole occurs in 
The World and the Individual, 1st series. Having defined an idea, its object, 
and truth (the real) as the li complete embodiment, in individual form and 
in final fulfilment, of the internal meaning of finite ideas,” (p. 339), he 
lays down three criteria of reality, the final object of any idea. “(1) A 
complete expression of the internal meaning of the finite idea with which, 
in any case, we start our quest; (2) a complete fulfilment of the will or 
purpose partially embodied in this idea; (3) an individual life for which 
no other can be substituted.” (pp. 340-41). While we could not go into 
Royce’s reasons for holding this belief without an attempt—which would 
of course be vain—to summarize The World and the Individual, we can 
hint at his reason. In his own words, 11 The only ground for this definition 
of Being lies in the fact that every other conception of reality proves, 
upon analysis, to be self-contradictory, precisely in so far as it does not in 
essence agree with this one; while every effort directly to deny the truth 
of this conception proves, upon analysis, to involve the covert affirmation 
of this very conception itself.” (pp. 348-49). 

so In the well-known third chapter of Appearance and Reality, Brad¬ 
ley’s argument is, roughly, that in the relation xRy, one is involved in 
an infinite regress since a relation is needed to relate x and R, 8, and 
x and S, and 8 and R, etc., ad infin. If there be any distinction between 
a relation and a term, this criticism will easily be seen to arise from a 
confusion of symbols and what they symbolize. It has been itself 
criticized by Russell, B.: The Principles of Mathematics, Cambridge, Uni¬ 
versity Press, 1903, vol. I, sec. 99; by Holt, E. B.: The Concept of Con¬ 
sciousness, 1914, pp. 25 ff. Cf. Meinong, A.: tTber Annahmen, Leipzig, J. 
A. Barth, 1910, pp. 260 ff. 



1921 ] Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth. 241 

of self-sufficiency is not to prove the assumption, “Truth must 
be self-sufficient. ’ ’ With Truth so delimited, Absolutism becomes 
almost inevitable. 

But now how is it possible for a system to include all other 
systems? Since a system rests upon consistency—non-contra- 
diction—how can a system be generated whose postulates shall 
contradict one another, a prerequisite of any all-inclusive system ? 
It hardly seems likely that such a demand can be met. The 
meeting of it is a test however of the satisfactoriness of any 
absolutistic theory of truth. Yet for the present let us state 
some of the best known reasons for absolutism, leaving the ques¬ 
tion of a system with contradictory postulates and of self- 
sufficiency till a later point. 

It has been said that before a proposition can be either true 
or false it must have significance. Could we understand mean¬ 
ing, we might understand truth. Truth and falsity are often 
held to be sharply antithetical terms. But the absolutist does 
not hold to this opinion. He maintains that true and false are, 
as it were, extremes at the ends of a continuum, in relation to 
which all propositions are defined. In so far as a proposition has 
any meaning at all, it is true; in so far as it is without meaning, 
it is false. 61 

Since meaning occurs in greater and less proportions, the next 
step is to discover whence it comes. It is found to come from 
the relation a judgment or idea has to other judgments and 
ideas. None by itself has meaning. 62 Before you can understand 
any bit of knowledge, you require a wealth of auxiliary knowl¬ 
edge. This is true of all knowledge. Hence the number of 
propositions is probably infinite. 63 Be the number infinite or not, 

ei “Meaning” is a term in idealistic philosophy almost synonymous 
with “reality.” (Cf. Overstreet, H. A.: “The Basal Principle of Truth- 
Evaluation,” University of California Publications Philosophy, vol. I.) 
In the light of this, my statement of the equating of truth with meaning 
becomes more intelligible. 

62 Cf. Boyce’s interpretation of one’s attempt to describe himself as a 
creature living now. The World and the Individual, vol. I, p. 407-408. 

«3 It would be hard to prove that the number was necessarily infinite 
since circular explanations or interpretations are possible. That is, there 
is no reason to suppose that it is illegitimate to bring out the meaning 
of proposition t by p when t has already been used to bring out the 
meaning of p. 



242 University of California Publications in Philosophy. IT o1 - 2 


we soon see that all propositions are bound up one with another 
by the very fact of their having meaning. This system, which 
must not be identified with a system derived through implication, 
will include contradictory propositions. For if the “ explana¬ 
tion’ ’ or 1 ‘ interpretation ’ ’ which produces it be at all akin to 
the “explanation” or “interpretation” which is used in daily 
life, it will be seen that a proposition gains meaning through its 
contradictories as well as through its implications. 

Since this system is not a system of non-contradictories, it 
were wiser to give it a name other than “system,” perhaps. It 
earns its justification for the name, however, by means of a second 
assumption, the assumption that relations are “internal.” This 
means that the “essence” of an entity is determined by the 
relations the entity maintains with other entities. In other words, 
nothing is isolated except artificially; nothing is independent; 
relations “make a difference” to their terms; they genuinely 
“bind” entities to one another. 64 If this postulate be justified, 
then the world is a whole and the only whole which is a unity, 
which is isolated, which is an individual. Put that together with 
the identification of truth and reality and you see at once the 
gist of Hegel’s dictum, “The truth is the whole.” Since, in fine, 
only significant propositions are true, since significance is deter¬ 
mined only by relations, since relations are ‘ ‘ internal, ’ ’ since the 


64 Mr. Bosanquet expands the meaning of 11 internal relations ’ ’ in the 
following way (Logic, vol. II, pp. 277-78): To begin with, a better name 
for them would be “relevant relations/’ “i.e., relations which are con¬ 
nected with the properties of their terms, so that any alteration of 
relations involves an alteration of properties and vice versa . 

‘ ‘ The following reasons for accepting a doctrine of relevant relations 
appear to me to be unimpeached. 

“(1) In a large proportion of cases the relevancy of the relations to 
the properties of the related terms involves a community of kind. You 
can not have a spatial relation between terms which are not in space, 
etc. . . . 

“(2) There is further no case in which on philosophical scrutiny the 
relevancy of relations to properties is not perceptible. . . . Each of two 
or more terms can only be understood if all are understood. (Father and 
son, for example.). . . 

“(3) Relations are true of their terms. They express their positions 
in complexes, which positions elicit their behavior, their self-maintenance 
in the world of things. This is really the all-important argument. . .” 

Mr. Russell holds that this view would lead to the doctrine that “there 
can never be two facts concerning the same thing.” (Scientific Method 
in Philosophy, 1914, p. 150-51.) But see Schweitzer, A. R.: “Some 
Critical Remarks on Analytical Realism,” Journal of Philosophy, vol. XI 
pp. 169 ff. 



1921 ] Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth. 243 

system of significance (truth) is after all the system of reality, 
then the truth is a coherent system of all possible propositions. 

How much of this account—synthesized from many opinions 
as it is—is inference and how much is fundamental? 65 The 
internality of relations is fundamental and the identity of truth 
and reality is fundamental, or at any rate they are fundamental 
enough to take the place of postulates. We have no interest here 
either in refuting or defending them. We are interested merely 
in pointing out that they are fundamental to absolutistic truth. 

In the second place does the account define a system which 
shall contain contradictory postulates or theorems? “Consist¬ 
ency’ ’ was earlier used to mean “non-contradiction”; it now 
means “participation in a significant whole.” Certainly it can 
not be assumed that the two systems are one without proof. A 
system which is determined by non-contradictory propositions 
would at least seem to be different from a system which is made 
for the very purpose of containing them. They may of course be 
resolved by the process of “stabilizing,” or of enriching, or of 
clarifying their meaning; then their contradiction would no doubt 
be removed. In that case, a system is created without contradic¬ 
tion and our test would not have been met. Or else their contra¬ 
diction may not have been resolved: in which case you seem to 
have something quite different as we have said. It may be that 
in reality the two systems are the same. What is contradiction? 

When this question is asked we simply want to know if the 
relation between two consistent propositions or—to be more 
liberal—between a proposition and what it implies, is identical 
with the relation between a proposition and what explains it, or 
brings out its meaning. Other aspects of non-contradiction will 
not help us in this difficulty, however interesting they may be 
both in themselves and for other problems. 

65 It is very difficult to find a word which will express what I mean 
by 1 ‘ fundamental.’ ’ The words “ assumed,” ‘‘postulated,’’ “presup¬ 
posed, ’ ’ unfortunately connote ‘ ‘ unproved, ’ ’ “ taken for granted, ’ ’ and the 
like. What I mean by “fundamental,’’ however, is in no sense of the 
word “the taken for granted.’’ I mean those propositions which are 
necessary in order to imply the system. Such propositions may or may 
not be taken for granted and in the case of the internality of relations 
they most certainly are not. For the Phenomenology is Hegel’s proof. A 
presupposition then is, as I use the word, simply the “converse” of an 
implication. 



244 University of California Publications in Philosophy. [VoL 2 


The only test we have that two propositions are non-contra¬ 
dictory is that they can both be true. We know that two proposi¬ 
tions can both be true by symbolic means. What these means 
tell us see the preceding chapter—is that if one is true there is 
no reason why the other is false. But, to repeat, the mere pres¬ 
ence of non-contradiction never indicates the whereabouts of 
truth. We are then given the choice of either or both of two 
propositions when they are non-contradictory. 

That the relation between two consistent propositions 60 is a 
different relation from the relation between the meaning of a 
proposition and what explains the meaning, can be seen from the 
following observation. In an implication-system only one of two 
contradictory propositions can have a place; in a significant whole 
both may—or must—have a place. A significant whole may well 
be described in the words of one of its advocates as “an organized 
individual experience, self-fulfilling and self-fulfilled. ’ ,67 It 
may not only be an infinite but a “determinate infinite.” 68 It 
ma y and probably will—be identical with the whole which is 
reality. But it is only the postulate of the identity of truth and 
reality which grants one the right to presuppose the quite other 
identity between such a whole and a whole derived from formal 
consistency—provided the latter be “truth.” Indeed it is not 
uncommon to hear absolutists ridiculing the notion of formal 
consistency’s being a valuable aid for attaining the truth. 

It could legitimately be asserted that the two wholes could 
never be the same. For given an implication-system of whatever 
dimensions you please, another can always be found, that system 
whose postulates in part or as a whole are the contradictories of 
the postulates of the given system. It is easy to declare that the 
contradictions are “resolved” by their common interpretative 


ee The relation between two consistent propositions need not be con¬ 
tused with the relation of a proposition and its implications. They may 
or may not be the same; it is rather a question of our definition of 
implication whether any true proposition implies all true propositions 
or not If we define “implication” so that this follows, then all true 
consistent propositions would sustain the relation of proposition and its 
implications. But even then the case would vary for consistent proposi- 
tions which were not all true. p uposi 

67 Joachim, H. H.: The Nature of Truth, p. 26. 

vol. 6 i, T pp e 570 ff. 6 iS ° f C0UrSe EOyC6 ’ 8, V - The ° rld and the In ^dual, 



192i] Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth. 245 

function in a significant whole. The resolution may yoke them 
to the same plow but their contradictoriness still remains. 

So much might be granted and the discussion taken up from 
another point of view. Contradiction has a great deal to do with 
negation. Perhaps an exposition of negation would remove the 
difficulty. Such an exposition is invariably furnished by the 
idealistic school. 

It is the peculiarity of the school to identify the true and the 
real. 69 It is also a peculiarity of the more Hegelian members to 
conceive reality in Heracleitean terms. But the Heracleiteanism 
of Hegel is of course not the unordered dance of the Greek; it is 
a steady progression whose law is known and formulated. As 
the law demands that of two contiguous stages the latter shall he 
in total opposition to the earlier, each stage is negation in refer¬ 
ence to another. Thus all stages are negative and at the same time 
positive. Consequently negation is either denied altogether or 
made part and parcel of the scheme, as one wishes. Whatever 
one’s opinion on that score, one sees that this metaphysics has 
no room for the sharp distinction between positive and negative 
which belongs to more naive metaphysics. Hence the mere fact of 
two enormous contradictory implication-systems is no stumbling 
block to the idealist. They are both equally ‘ ‘ significant ’ ’ aspects 
of one whole, like the two flashing colors of a changeable silk. 

From the start with formal consistency, we pass to degrees 
of truth, thence to contradiction, thence to negation. And we 
find all these concepts reinterpreted. There is no way of under¬ 
mining such a method unless it be by undermining its funda¬ 
mental presuppositions. He who would attempt it is confronted - 

69 But see also Montague, W. P.: A Realistic Theory of Truth and 
Error, The New Realism, pp. 251-300, incl., for a view by no means 
ostensibly idealistic. Mr. Montague defines the real universe as “the 
space-time system of existents, together with all that is presupposed by 
that system.’’ (p. 255.) “I shall use the term ‘truth’ to connote ‘true 
knowledge’ and the term ‘error’ to connote ‘false knowledge’; hence the 
definition of truth and error will resolve itself into a definition of true 
and false. I hold that the true and the false are respectively the real and 
the unreal, considered as objects of a possible belief or judgment. Lest 
one now ask Mr. Montague what space-time existent the word “truth” 
symbolizes that his definition may be shown to be no belief in the real, 
he adds that the definition of the real is superfluous and the true is the 
real according to anyone’s definition of the real. I am not sure that Mr. 
Montague means by a belief in the real a belief that a certain entity is 
real. 



246 University of California Publications in Philosophy . [V°l. 2 


with the magnificence of the Phenomenology as well as other 
ancillary volumes of later and no more original thinkers. 

The approaches to idealistic absolutism are not yet all indi¬ 
cated. One more approach—in comparison with which the others 
seem to be mere tributaries—is the theory of “ appearance and 
reality.” The initial distinction which gives rise to the theory 
is too familiar to need demonstration. The difficulty is the selec¬ 
tion of a standard by which we can determine what is real in 
distinction to what merely seems to be real. All discussions pre¬ 
suppose two great mutually exclusive classes of being. But the 
criteria of membership in the different classes vary with almost 
every point of view. To the idealist of the type now under con¬ 
sideration, nothing is real unless it give evidences of unity and 
permanence. But unity is the unity of the self-contained, the 
Whole, ’ ’ and permanence is the permanence of the eternal, the 
time-inclusive. For that very reason none of our experiences 
are real. They demand unification and eternality. But such are 
achieved only by participation in a system which is one and 
eternal. That there is such a system is implied by the very 
incompleteness and ephemerality of what we know. For, in the 
last analysis, the fragmentary and the ephemeral are said to be 
self-contradictory and self-contradiction cannot be tolerated in 
Reality. The part contradicts itself for in its isolation it poses 
as a whole. The ephemeral contradicts itself, for it is gone as 
soon as it is asserted. The part then rests upon a whole, the 
temporal upon the eternal. 70 Without a rest of this sort they 
lose all meaning. 


70 For the dependence of the temporal upon the eternal, cf. Royce* 
The World and the Individual, vol. I, pp. 408 ff. “This university [of 
R.’s audience] is the living presence, in newly developed and growing 
form, of its own historic past. This is what the present University 
means. Its present is inseparable from its past. You too are yourself 
because at this instant you relate yourself to your own past. The mean¬ 
ing of the past is a necessity, if you are to give to your present any 
rational meaning. Nor is this true alone of your knowledge about your¬ 
self. It is true of the very Being that you attribute to your present 
facts. However rapidly any Being grows, its very growth means relation 
to its own earlier Being. And no recondite discussion of the supposed 
permanence of substance is in the least needed to remind you even if 
you wholly abstract from the traditional doctrines of substance that 
whatever novelties the present may contain, these very novelties get 
their character, both for you, and for anyone to whom they are real at 
all, by virtue of their relation to past beings and events, so that if per 



1921] Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth. 247 


Such a meager account pretends to be neither criticism nor 
proof. It pretends to be merely the statement of another point of 
view. It gives us in fine an absolute system which is the real, a 
system at once a whole and a permanent whole. Our interest 
in it is whether it meets our early demand of furnishing a system 
with contradictory postulates. Other matters such as the sound¬ 
ness of the reasoning which produces it or the importance of its 
criteria of the real are not to our purpose. 

One reason why this system does not meet our demand we 
have given above. Another is that the given system by definition 
resolves contradiction. If it does away with contradiction, if 
contradiction is the very mark of appearance, obviously we have 
here no system with contradictory postulates. 

Not only that, it is—again by definition—transcendent of our 
experience. In that case how can it pretend to solve our problems, 
which are, at least in so far as they trouble us, human problems ? 
They may be merely apparent, but, as Mr. Bradley himself 
admits, 71 they none the less are. For the Absolute there is 

impossibile, the whole past of temporal Being were absolutely stricken out, 
the present, which would then involve no historical relations to the fore¬ 
going, no entrance of novelty into the old order, no growth, no decay, no 
endurance, and no continuance of a former process in new forms, would 
simply lose every element that now gives it rational coherence. 

“Far then from being merely contrasted with present Reality, past 
Reality, viewed in general, is a correlated region of that very whole of 
temporal existence in which alone the present itself has any comprehensible 
place or even any conceivable Being. Nor can any fact of nature, how¬ 
ever remote from us it now seems, be viewed by us as real without being 
caught in the net of this universal time-order.” 

This is a presentation of a doctrine which argues not from the logical 
significance of a relation to what it implies (for example, a “part” 
implies something of which it must be a part, i.e., a whole), but from 
“experience” itself. For an analog of Royce’s conception of time, 
equally based upon “experience,” see Bergson’s description of the self’s 
development in L’iZvolution Creatrice (p. 2). Bergson of course has not 
Royce’s conception of the time-process as a “whole.” For Royce’s dis¬ 
cussion of Bergson in this respect, see The Problem of Christianity, New 
York, Macmillan, 1913, vol. II, pp. 15'4 ff. 

Appearance and Beality, pp. 131 If. “We shall have hereafter to 
enquire into the nature of appearance; but for the present we may keep 
a fast hold upon this, that appearances exist. That is absolutely certain, 
and to deny it is nonsense. . . . Our appearances no doubt may be a 
beggarly show, and their nature to an unknown extent may be something 
which, as it is, is not true of reality. That is one thing, and it is quite 
another thing to speak as if these facts had no actual existence, or as if 
there could be anything but reality to which they could belong. . . . 
What appears, for that sole reason, most indubitably is; and there is no 
possibility of conjuring its being away from it.” 



248 University of California Publications in Philosophy. IT°l. 2 

complete truth; for us there is only fragmentary truth. Ought 
not this fragmentary truth to be explained? How does it 
happen to be truth at all? Somehow or other some things are 
true. What are these things and why are they true? Lexi¬ 
cographical exercise is largely prescribed by the will of the 
exerciser, we admit. We can of course call anything “ truth/ ’ 
But there is a truth accepted and believed in by mortals, and 
whether it fits into an absolute system or not, they have the right 
to waive such a matter and ask that their truth be accounted for, 
analyzed, described. If it turns out to be largely falsehood, not 
it but the postulates which led to such an opinion should be 
rejected. Why should one accept a theory whose outcome is the 
denial of the theory’s subject-matter? 

Such criticism seems permissible but we must abandon it for 
the application of the criteria laid down at this essay’s outset. 
Let us not discuss the difficulties in the notion of degrees of truth, 
a notion implied by absolutistic idealism. Let us assume that all 
propositions are partly true and partly false and that truth is 
found only in “significant wholes.” 

Such a theory is not self-critical. 72 For if truth is the whole, 
statements about truth are not true. They are additions to the 
whole. Or if they do not add to the whole—which they do not 
when the whole is infinite—they are at any rate not identical 
with the whole. But if they are not the whole, they are only 
partly true. Their partial truth in consequence involves the 


72 This has also been pointed out by Joachim. (See Nature of Truth, 
secs. 60 ff., for a summary of his argument.) But Joachim is content with 
this negative position instead of suspecting that the presuppositions 
which implied it were questionable. 

73 y. Bradley, Principles of Logic, London, Kegan Paul, French and Co., 
1883, p. 10. “ Judgment is the act which refers an ideal content (recog¬ 
nized as such) to a reality beyond the act.” Cf. his article, quoted above 
in note 58 (q.v.), “On Appearance, Error, and Contradiction,” in which he 
says that truth demands “that the idea should in the end be reconstituted 
by the subject of the judgment and should in no sense whatever fall out¬ 
side.” (p. 158). 

Cf. Bosanquet: Logic, 2nd ed., vol. I, p. 71, under the topic, the relation 
of judgments to “reality.” 

The following chain of reasoning, not found in any one author, will 
suggest the literalness of the text: All relations are internal. Therefore 
the knowledge relation, which is universal, changes its relata. But in 
judging we are assigning predicates to an object (usually held to be 
“reality”). Since reality is, by virtue of our first point, essentially 



I92i] Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth . 249 


partial truth of absolutism. The difficulty then arises of deter¬ 
mining how much of absolutism is true. The difficulty can only 
be solved when some means is furnished for measuring the amount 
of truth in any system. And we have no such means. 

Hegel himself attempts to surmount this difficulty by pointing 
out that absolutism is the outgrowth through an inevitable process 
of logical development from all other theories of reality. It is 
not another theory, it is all other theories absorbed and unified. 
It matters not with what theory you start, if you carry on your 
deductions, you will in the end reach absolutism. Absolutism is 
then the whole and hence the truth. 

This does not end the matter, however, for statements about 
absolutism are not absolutism—unless subject-matter and proposi¬ 
tion coincide. This sometimes, if not always, seems to be the 
axiom of the absolutist; we have a number of statements that in 
judging the subject somehow extends itself outward embracing 
an external world. 73 Where this means that thought is a genu¬ 
inely creative art, the—at any rate partly—voluntary behavior 
of a rational subject and not the mere irregular flurry of psychic 
somethings, ideas or images or what you will, it is a deliberate 
and no doubt justifiable protest against a certain type of 
psychology. In that case, however, its objects are not the 
“things” of the “natural sciences,” even when those “things” 
are said to be psychical in character. For the most rigid sub¬ 
jectivist would not deny the need of differentiating in his 

homogeneous with “ knowledge, ’ ’ then judgment affects reality directly. 
The creative aspect of judgment becomes not the creation of knowledge 
but of an external 11 world. ’ ’ 

Here a subjectivism, very like that of the old-fashioned subjectivist, 
is introduced into a philosophy whose intentions are by no means 
prejudicial to that end. It is one thing to turn subjectivist because of 
your belief in physics; it is quite another thing to do so because of the 
‘ 1 ego-centric predicament’’ plus the theory of internal relations. Even 
if relations are internal, the object, if existent prior to knowledge of it— 
logically or temporally prior—would have just as much influence upon 
the “mind” as the mind upon it. To argue that it is essentially 
“mental”—a procedure which sometimes is disagreeable to its very 
advocates—is to argue from a new, and often concealed, premise, a 
premise which would not follow from the postulate of internality. That 
premise is that in the ubiquitous knowledge-relation the referent is con¬ 
stitutive of the relata. According to the theory of internality, the con¬ 
verse of a relation is as constitutive as the relation. This of course is 
the idealist’s own reason for his repugnance to what he calls abstract 
unity.” Just as the parts of a “thing” are chained together by indis¬ 
soluble relations, so are relations wherever they subsist indissoluble. 
Hence there is only one “thing,” the whole. 



250 University of California Publications in Philosophy. [W>1. 2 

psychical universe between the entities which seem to he psychical 
and those which do not. It would then follow that the sub¬ 
jectivist on his side would have to distinguish between a thought 
and its subject-matter, between a symbol and what it symbolizes. 

When the act of judging is the embracing by a subject of his 
object and when it is inferred that a judgment and its “content ’’ 
are identical, then we are likely to become involved in the classic 
paradoxes the solution of which Mr. Russell has attempted in his 
“theory of types.” Without going into that, we can easily see 
that the whole body of propositions which make up absolutism 
may be true and only a part of those about absolutism may be 
true. An absolutist himself would be willing to admit that 
the proposition, “Absolutism is false” is false. But if that is 
identical with or part of absolutism, then absolutism is entirely 
or partly false. If it is not part of absolutism then absolutism 
is not the whole body of propositions. Moreover there is no 
reason prima facie why the contradictory of “Absolutism is 
false” should not also lie outside the system. If it does, then 
why is it true ? Not because it has a place in a significant whole, 
we can say at once. Unless this reasoning be vicious we are again 
back at our start, namely at that point where absolutism appeared 
to be not self-critical. 

Absolutism does not seem to meet the test of generality. It 
has its specific metaphysics, theory of judgment, logic of relations. 
Without the doctrines that relations are internal, that truth and 
reality are one, that reality is a self-contained whole, that judg¬ 
ments definitely lay hold of their subject-matter and change it 
to conform to their meaning, it is hard to see where absolutistic 
truth could find a footing. We must have some assumptions to 
be sure, but they need not be as specific as these. It is quite 
possible to formulate a theory of truth without respect to the 
nature of relations. The correspondence theory is a case in point. 
If relations are internal, then correspondence between proposi¬ 
tions and facts changes the proposition and changes the fact. 
But correspondence is no more lost than it would be provided 
relations were external. Absolutistic truth however requires that 
relations be internal. The externality of relations would never 


1921.] Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth. 251 


give one an idealistic absolute—at least not in the opinion of 
absolutists. 74 It sometimes seems as if the desire to substantiate 
a certain theory were more potent here than the desire to draw 
out of certain apparently true propositions their implications. 

It is very well known that the methods of mathematical 
implication are not always the most fruitful for metaphysics and 
philosophy in general. Perhaps it is well that philosophy should 
be more loosely and spontaneously constructed. New discoveries 
are often made by freeing the imagination from close reasoning. 
But the rigidity of mathematical logic has surely its lesson, a 
lesson which can be learned without enslaving oneself to the 
teacher. If in this especial case the postulate that truth is 
identical with reality lead one to search for a morphological unity 
in the two, lead one to assert the partial falsity of isolated 
propositions and at the same time to assert their partial truth, 
then it would seem to follow that (apart from the fact that the 
very ideas which gave rise to these ideas were also mere fragments 
of a whole and not a whole) something is wrong somewhere, 
inasmuch as such findings practically deny the existence of the 
problem which they attempted to solve. If they do not deny 
the problem, they at least evade it. 

It might be well here to ask an absolutist how he begins his 
ratiocination. Unless the total system is given him intuitively 
en Hoc, he must begin with something. Now he will admit that 
some axioms are needed for inference itself, primarily the axiom, 
“Anything implied by a true proposition is true.” If he will, 
he must admit that the postulates—or the initial propositions 
with which he begins his system—are themselves true. But how 
true are they? If they are only as true as other propositions, 
there is no reason to prefer them to other propositions. They 
should be as true as the system; they should be absolutely true. 
Royce insists that they are and in his Heidelberg address 

74 Cf. Mr. Bosanquet, for instance, Logic, ed. 2, vol. II, pp. 279 ff., 
where he argues that externalism implies a host of ‘ 1 tiny Absolutes, ’ ’ an 
absolutism which breaks down “if any of these Absolutes imply any 
term beyond themselves. * ’ (See also Bradley, Appearance and Beality, 
pp. 140 ff.) 

Before criticising this opinion, the meaning of “implies ’’ would have to 
be determined. It may be almost anything, as it is frequently used, from 
“has a relation to” to “is dependent upon.” 



252 University of California Publications in Philosophy. IT o1 - 2 


indicates the way to discover them. 75 (Mr. Bosanquet however 
rejects this. 76 ) Granting that this way leads to the desired goal, 
how can propositions—isolated propositions—be absolutely true 
since they are not coincident with the Whole ? To be sure, they 
imply the Whole—the whole absolutistic System—but they are 
it only as all premises are their implications. We might call this 
a potential identity, in the Aristotelian sense of the word ‘ ‘ poten¬ 
tial,’ ’ but it certainly is not “actual” identity. Is it, then, to 
be said that absolutism with all its transmuted contradictions is 
true in the same way as its postulates with all their potential 
absolutism are true? Or are the postulates true only because 
their implications are assumed to be true? 

At first sight absolutism would seem to meet the test of 
catholicity better than the tests above. That it does not account 


75 Win. James and Other Essays, pp. 187 ff. The most concise statement 
of the manner in which absolutely true propositions are discovered is 
given on p. 251, “An absolute truth is one whose denial implies the 
reassertion of that same truth/ ' In other words, p is absolutely true, 
when — p implies p. 

Professor Urban furnishes an interesting criticism of this criterion 
of absolute truth. (Urban, P. N.: “On a Supposed Criterion of the 
Absolute Truth of Some Propositions, '' Journal of Philosophy, etc., vol. Y, 
pp. 701 ff.) He first asks whether an apagogical proof demonstrates an 
absolute truth. If it does, he says, one can take a theorem directly proved, 
contradict it, deduce from its contradiction “a conclusion which contra¬ 
dicts any one of the propositions constituting the nervus probandi of the 
direct proof. ” (p. 703). He finally gives a case in which there is a 
proposition obviously of only “relative” truth whose denial implies its 
assertion. “A man A owes to B the sum of $5.06. B moves to another 
town, and asks A to send all the money by one money order and to sub¬ 
tract at once the cost of the money order from the original debt. In this 
case the proposition holds that A can not comply with B's instructions. 
Let us start from the assumption that our proposition is false, i.e., that 
A can send the money in the way required by B. If the money is to be 
sent by one money order, A must send it either at the rate for orders 
from $2.51 to $5.00, which is $.05, or at the rate of $.08 for orders from 
$5.01 to $10.00. In the first case A would have to subtract $.05 from 
$5.06 which leaves $5.01, which is accepted only at the rate of $.08; but 
if A tries to send the money at the higher rate, he has left only $4.98, 
which is forwarded at the rate of $.05. In the first case A is $.03 short, 
and in the second case he has $.03 left. The very supposition, therefore, 
that A can send the money as instructed by B implies that he can not do 
it. The proposition is proved indirectly and the author's (Boyce's) 
criterion for absolute truth is obviously fulfilled, but who will be inclined 
to call this proposition absolutely true?” (p. 204). 

Cf. Bradley's Appearance and Reality, pp. 136 ft. “Ultimate reality is 
such that it does not contradict itself; here is an absolute criterion. And 
it is proved absolute by the fact that, either in endeavoring to deny it, 
or even in attempting to doubt it, we tacitly assume its validity.” 

76 See note 54 for reference. 



1921] Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth. 253 

for meaningless propositions must not be taken with too great 
seriousness. 77 For absolutism, all propositions have meaning— 
otherwise they are not propositions. Does it account for false 
propositions? It seems in some of its expressions to identify 
falsity with the claim of a fragment of the whole to be a whole 
—which fundamentally would be no doubt an infringement of 
‘ ‘ the law of identity. ’ ’ Since to be a whole is equivalent to being 
true, a false judgment is a judgment which claims to be true. 78 
But do not all judgments claim to be true ? As Mr. Joachim says, 
it is only when a man recognizes that he is in error he is on the 
road to truth. 79 Two consequences seem to follow, (a) that all 
propositions are false, (5) that only absolutists err. 

The first consequence is not troublesome to an absolutist, for 
he agrees that here is an element of falsity in all propositions. 
This does not answer the question of what makes them false. 
Though all entities are characterized individually by two con¬ 
tradictory properties, one can not infer that the contradiction 
does not exist. If all men are both good and bad individually, 
for instance, w r e can not infer that there are no such things as 
good and bad. We may assume that the properties are not after 
all contradictory, but then the reason for the argument dis¬ 
appears. If we assume that they are contradictory, we must 
assume that they are distinct. And even when they qualify one 
entity—an apparent impossibility—their distinctness is preserved. 
So all propositions may be both true and false individually, pro¬ 
viding such a case is not meaningless. But the dilemma that 
follows must not be shunned. If they are contradictory, they are 
distinct and can be “accounted for/’ If they are not contra¬ 
dictory, why bother about them ? It is very questionable whether 
an explanation which explains a distinction by proving that the 
distinction does not exist is an explanation at all. 

77 If absolutism admits only true and false propositions the attempted 
criticism on page 250 above is more telling. It was there said that the 
proposition 11 Absolutism is false ’’ might well be said not to be part of 
absolutism, and that, were it not, its contradictory would not be a part. 
Its contradictory, if there be no meaningless propositions, would practi¬ 
cally be 1 Absolutism is true. ’ ’ If this falls outside the system the truth 
of absolutism is not self-contained and the theory is not self-critical. 

78 Nature of Truth, p. 142. Cf. also p. 161, . . error, i.e., the frag¬ 

mentary thinking which, claiming to be complete, is false. ’ ’ 

7» Nature of Truth, pp. 138 ff. (sec. 51) for instance. 



254 University of California Publications in Philosophy. [Vol. 2 

The second consequence is more disastrous. If error means a 
consciousness of error, a claiming, a conscious claiming, of self- 
inclusiveness for what is really dependent, surely the non- 
absolutist never errs. If he be the ‘ ‘ plain man, * ’ he knows nothing 
of self-inclusiveness and dependence; he stumbles along as well 
as he can without knowledge of either metaphysics or episte¬ 
mology. How then can he claim such things? As for the non¬ 
absolutist, he will be far from claiming goods in whose value 
he does not believe. The absolutist alone cares enough for this 
kind of truth to claim it for his opinions. If he object, saying 
that the others claim it though they know it not, that the claim 
is involved in the claim of truth, he presupposes the truth of 
absolutism. If absolutism is true, then obviously true proposi¬ 
tions claim absolutistic truth. Hut it is the truth of absolutism 
which is the very question at issue. 

An objection to this criticism may be that it is singularly 
blind to the manners of theorizing. A theory often defines cer¬ 
tain facts in certain terms and then interprets other facts in 
these terms. Consequently it must be expected that the truth an 
absolutist talks about will be absolutistic truth. To illustrate 
this, consider the field of ethics. It is platitudinous enough to 
point out that the saint in one system is the sinner in another— 
that the Nietzschean saint will be the Christian devil. 

So much is very telling as far as it goes, but it does not go 
far enough. If the Nietzschean said to his audience, “Take any 
good man you please and you will find that he emulates Zara- 
thustra, that he exerts a master’s will to power on all occasions”; 
and if Saint Francis were produced and the Nietzschean insisted 
that Saint Francis did exert his will to power—not as a “slave” 
but as a “master” (for that alone would make our analogy 
exact); and if he insisted that Saint Francis did all this without 
knowing it; then he would be doing what the absolutist—if there 
be such—does when he insists that men in error claim, whether 
they know it or not, absolutistic truth for their opinions. 

Now finally, how are we to apply the absolutistic test of truth. 
Given Royce’s “reflective method,” we can be pretty sure of 
what we may believe with certainty. Believe with certainty, says 


19 2 l] Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth. 255 


Royce, only that whose denial is self-refuting. This gives such 
propositions as “Some thing is true. ,, and “There is no last 
prime number. ” But suppose we want to know when the war 
will end, or how Edwin Brood was to have turned out, or how 
many perpendiculars to any line can be erected at any point 
upon the line. What categorical imperative have we to deter¬ 
mine our action at such times? The mere statement that the 
truth is the whole or that no answer to these questions will be 
more than partly true, is hardly serviceable. It is only something 
more detailed which will help us. 

We must find out definitely how to measure amounts of truth 
and falsity. We must be given a technique that will isolate the 
elements of a proposition so that what is true about it will shine 
out amid what is false. We do not want either such a criterion 
as Mr. Joachim gives in his example of the lack of harmony in 
the Centaur, nor Hegel in his case of the sick man. For Mr. 
Joachim our idea of a Centaur is false to our idea of man and 
horse as physiological organisms ; 80 for Ilegel the sick man is false 
to the notion of man, which implies health. 81 These criteria are 

«<> Joachim begins the paragraph referred to by a statement of con- 
ceivability as the criterion of truth. To be conceivable means to be a 
significant whole. He then says, “In this sense a Centaur is ‘incon¬ 
ceivable,’ while the antipodes are clearly ‘conceivable.’ For the elements 
constitutive of the Centaur refuse to enter into reciprocal adjustment. 
They collide among themselves, or they clash with some of the constitutive 
elements in the wider sphere of experience, that larger significant whole, 
in which the Centaur must find a place. The horse man might pass ex¬ 
ternally as a convenient shape for rapid movement; but how about his 
internal economy, the structure, adjustment and functioning of his inner 
organs? If he is to be ‘actual,’ the animal kingdom is his natural home. 
But if we persisted in our attempt to locate the creature there, we should 
inevitably bring confusion and contradiction into the sphere of significant 
being—so far at least as it is manifest to us in our anatomical and 
physiological knowledge, etc. ...” Nature of Truth, pp. 6fi-68. 

si V. Ilegel: Logic, tr. by W. Wallace, Oxford, University Press, 1874, 
p. 263. “In common life the terms truth and correctness are often re¬ 
garded as synonyms. We often speak of the truth of a content, when we 
are only thinking of its correctness. Correctness, generally speaking, con¬ 
cerns only the formal coincidence between our conception and its content, 
whatever the construction of this content may be. Truth, on the con¬ 
trary, lies in the coincidence of the object with itself, i.e., with its notion. 
That a person is sick, or that someone has committed a theft, may cer¬ 
tainly be correct. But the content is untrue. A sick body is not in 
harmony with the notion of body, and there is a want of congruity 
between theft and the notion of human conduct. These instances may 
show that an immediate judgment, in which an abstract quality is 
predicated of an immediately individual thing, however correct it may be, 



256 University of California Publications in Philosophy. tT°l. 2 


manifestly founded on the assumption of a basic standard with 
which all propositions must harmonize. 82 The standard man is 
a well man. A sick man contradicts the standard. So much for 
terms. What is the case when we come to propositions. It would 
seem at any rate as if men sometimes did contradict the standard 
and thus be false to it. But propositions which said so would be 
true, upon any theory. If there be a world of Platonic ideas quite 
XMpfc, we might have an immutable standard with which our 
thoughts could tally. But the idea %<*>/>& is hardly attainable 
and as Hegel saw the standard must be immanent in the object 
itself. Our personal ideas change as we change, growing more 
“correct” or less “correct.” But what evidence have we of 
standards immanent in objects? How are we to collect the 
evidence ? It does not help us to say that the object must coincide 
with itself. For upon investigation we discover that the object’s 
self, its “notion,” is the Absolute. So that our question finally 
becomes, “How can we tell when an object is ‘real’ and when it 
is not?” (So much, even if answered, would hardly help us 
when we ceased discussing “terms” and turned to propositions.) 

If one is satisfied with the theory of appearance and reality 
given by the Hegelian idealists, and with the assumption that the 
true is the real, then he has his answer all made for him: No 
object is real except the Absolute which is its own object. It 
would be mere repetition to criticize it here. 

can not contain truth. The subject and predicate of it do not stand to 
each other in the relation of reality and notion.” 

Hegel thus is not differentiating between the truth of propositions and 
of “ideas,” as his opening passage seems to indicate. Propositions may¬ 
be both correct and true and correct and false. What he means by 
“correct,” the correspondence theory, one might say fairly enough, calls 
11 true. ’ ’ 

82 This is somewhat suggested, though I am very liberally interpreting 
the text, in the opening pragraph of Mr. Bosanquet’s chapter on judg¬ 
ment, Logic, vol I, p. 67. 



1921 ] Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth. 257 


VOLUNTARISTIC THEORIES OF TRUTH 83 

The dogma that there is no immanent criterion of truth in 
objects, pronounced in the last chapter, is a denial in substance 
of the usual epistemological dogma of immediate knowledge. 
Before justifying our position, let us give our reasons for dis¬ 
cussing knowledge at all. 

The demand for applicability is at the back of our reasons for 
discussing knowledge. The demand for applicability is the 
demand that a theory of truth be what is ordinarily called 
practical.” A practical theory will do things which an im¬ 
practical theory is unable to do. A practical theory of physics 
will furnish material which can be tested in the physical labora¬ 
tory. A practical theory of economics will furnish material to 
be tested in the exchange. 

Now for our purposes anything which is said about any sub¬ 
ject-matter can properly be called a theory or part of a theory 
about that subject-matter. “Abraham Lincoln was a martyr to 
the cause of liberty,” for our purposes is a theoretical statement 
(a theory) about Abraham Lincoln. “Rain is good for the 
crops, ’ * 1 is a theoretical statement about rain. The difficulty is to 
tell which of these theories is worth knowing. For there is such 
a wealth of them that we must select. The number of statements 
about any subject-matter will obviously be equal to the number 
of relations the subject-matter sustains and that number is too 

83 Under the heading of ‘ * voluntaristic theories" I have grouped the 
work of Pierce, James, Dewey, and Royce, primarily, with suggestions 
from Yaihinger and Schiller, i.e., the work in the main of the pragmatists. 
To make a significant analysis of these theories in many ways different 
from one another, it was necessary to adopt a terminology more or less 
original. With that in mind I have tried to use words with as little 
technical connotation as possible. The terminology of Royce in The 
Problem of Christianity , vol. II, seemed best adapted to my purpose. But 

I do not intend by using it to bind myself to the development of the 
epistemology which Royce works out there. 

Such words as “proposition," constituent," “curiosity," “interpreta¬ 
tion" are to be read with the greatest spirit of naivete possible for a 
technical reader to assume. For they are not supposed to connote any 
specific theory of logic. To bring this out more fully I have tried to 
give alternative readings where there were technical suggestions. 



258 University of California Publications in Philosophy. IT 0 ** 2 

great for human beings to comprehend in a lifetime. How then 
are we to choose ? 

All the statements may be consistent because they may assert 
entirely different facts. Consequently we can not be asked to 
select those theories or theoretical statements which are consistent. 
There is no deed to mystify the issue; the case is not out of the 
ordinary. It is solved when we remember how every question 
seems, as it were, to select its own answer. When you ask, ‘ ‘Who 
was Chaucer V’ you know beforehand the kind of answer you 
want. It may be an answer giving you Chaucer’s parentage, or 
his occupation, or his position in English letters, or the date of 
his death, or all these things and more. It is not so much a 
question of truth or falsity which determines what answer you 
want, but rather a question of your particular interest. To put 
it differently, you ask questions to satisfy a doubt. But a doubt 
is as specific a thing as what is doubted—though it is usually ill- 
phrased. Almost everyone knows how restless he is until the 
doubts he has are satisfied not vaguely, not generally, but with 
definiteness and specificity. This is an example of the way ques¬ 
tions select their answers. It will be noticed that only men who 
“know the right answer’ can ask clear questions. 

So of all the countless things that can be said about truth, 
there is one thing in particular that we want when we ask, 
“What is truth?” It is the assumption of this essay that that 
thing is information not so much about the metaphysical status 
of truth but about its behavior in daily life. We must assume 
that truth exists and then we must set out to find ways of dis¬ 
covering it, of telling it from falsity, of using it after we have it. 
We want a statement in empirical terms of its habitat and genesis 
and, since it is a norm of knowledge, we want it to be a norm 
which we can apply. That there is such a norm is involved in 
the fact of truth’s being in some sense of the word a human affair. 
It may also be a divine affair. But to state its divinity does not 
help us in our troubles unless we be gods. We are willing to 
accept an account of its divinity but we also want an account 
of its humanity. We have given to us as a starting point the 
fact that truth plays some part in man’s life. Our search is to 
discover the part in man’s life which it plays. 


1921] Baas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth. 259 


But truth is a property of man’s beliefs, his assertions, his 
judgments, his knowledge. Therefore some study of knowledge 
is necessary. This does not mean a complete epistemology. It 
means simply a statement of the “given”—as it might be called. 
The given may be analyzed by an epistemologist or a psychologist 
into elements differing radically according to the analyzer’s 
philosophic bias. But it must be remembered that no entity is 
destroyed by being analyzed. For a true analysis will present 
not only the elements but the relations between them. There is 
no reason why we should assert the greater “reality” of the 
elements. Hence there is no reason why we should not indicate 
certain peculiarities of knowledge so long as those peculiarities 
are not discovered as the result of a specific metaphysical 
assumption. 

If we have then made clear why we are interested in knowl¬ 
edge, let us proceed to indicate what knowledge means for us. 

It was said above that the existence of a criterion of truth 
immanent in objects was denied and that this denial involved a 
denial of the existence of immediate knowledge. Immediate 
knowledge is denied in order to preserve the homogeneity of 
“knowledge.” If we are using a term, it had best mean one 
thing obviously; even the profoundest thinkers have confused 
the meanings of one term when they have admitted a plurality 
of meanings. “Knowledge,” we believe, is one of these ambig¬ 
uous terms. And its most distressing ambiguity arises from a 
confusion of “immediate knowledge” with “mediate knowledge.” 

Immediate knowledge has always been said to differ from 
mediate knowledge in several important respects. Among them 
are the following. 

( a) Immediate knowledge is indubitable whereas mediate knowl¬ 
edge is dubitable. 84: 


84 Cf Calkins, M. W.: Persistent Problems of Philosophy, 3rd revised 
ed New York, Macmillan, 1912, p. 409, where the meaning of “im¬ 
mediate” is said to be “ ‘unreasoned and consequently not demanding 
proof ’ ” See also Russell, B.: Problems of Philosophy, p. 235, pp. 210 ff. 
Mr Russell does not seem to be absolutely sure whether we ever have 
indubitable knowledge, but if we have it will be immediate, in his own 
words, ‘ ‘ knowledge by acquaintance . 1 ’ But see his Scientific Method m 
Philosophy, p. 68, where he seems more certain. 



260 University of California Publications in Philosophy. [V°l. 2 


There seems to be some demand for basing onr knowledge on 
something. A great deal of what we know is supposed to be 
inference and inference is only valid if it is based upon some¬ 
thing true. This, as we saw earlier, is the reason why a purely 
“ formal*’ theory of truth—the consistency theory—fails to solve 
our difficulties. It would seem as if truth were a function of 
‘ 1 knowledge-getting ’ ’ rather than of knowledge when got. But 
this is no more than the old adage that logic has no dealings 
with the truth. Consequently there must be some bits of knowl¬ 
edge which we can not doubt to serve as our logical underpinning. 
Such knowledge is called immediate. 

Error, then, and uncertainty ought not to arise from the 
inferences made from the immediate. Because if the immediate 
is indubitable and is taken as the basis of our reasoning, and if 
our reasoning be accurate, then our results ought to be true and 
indubitable. 

(b) Since the immediate is indubitable, it is taken as the start¬ 
ing point for philosophy , 85 

This point is clearly brought out by the sensationalistic 
empiricists, who identify the immediate with the sensory. Hume, 
for instance, states definitely that the one test of cognitive 
validity is an idea’s roots in the senses. We are to trace every 
idea to its source in an impression if we wish to discover its truth. 
The point is also made by James. It is moreover the central 
idea of mysticism. 86 

ss This is excellently brought out by Miss Calkins’s exposition of per¬ 
sonal idealism (op. cit., pp. 406 ff.). After showing that the self is 
immediately given and describing its character in some detail (p. 408), 
she says in passing (p. 409), “Stress has been laid throughout this book 
on the fact that the immediateness of self-consciousness is the starting- 
point of all philosophy, the guarantee of all truth. I can not doubt, I know 
immediately, that I, a conscious self, or person, exist; and I must believe 
whatever is involved in this certainty of my own existence.’’ (My 
italics.) 

se See note 10 for a textual reference in substantiation of this claim. 
Mysticism, it should be added, is not supposed to find the validity of any 
idea in the idea’s sensory origin. On the contrary, it usually denies any 
validity to sense-data. But its criterion of truth is immediacy—an un¬ 
reasoned, face-to-face sort of knowledge, which exists in one case alone 
the Beatific Vision. 



1921] Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth. 261 


(c) Immediate knowledge is often, though not always explicitly, 
said to he “appreciative,’’ whereas mediate knowledge is 
then said to he less reliable. 87 


This does not mean that mediate knowledge is untrue bnt 
simply “cold,” ‘‘devitalizing.’’ For instance wares advertised 
must needs be ‘ ‘ seen to be appreciated 1 ’; a blind man may know 
all about a color but can never “really know” the color; an 
eyewitness is held to be more reliable than indirect testimony 
(circumstantial evidence). These differences make immediate 
knowledge very much like, if not identical with, 11 acquaintance, 
and mediate knowledge like ‘ ‘ description. ’ ’ Or again they seem 
to divide knowledge into the familiar kennen and wissen, knowl- 
edge-of and knowledge-about, perceptual and conceptual knowl¬ 
edge. The important point about this third distinction is not a 
matter of objects, but a matter of value-for-life. 

( d ) In contemporary introspective psychology, the objects of 
immediate knowledge are said to he the irreducihles of 
whatsoever stuff the mind is made of. 


Thus sensations are said to be immediately given and become 
a sort of mental (psychical) irreducible. Or “the self” is said 
to be immediately given and thus becomes a constituent part of 
one’s consciousness. This indicates that immediate knowledge is 
supposed to be knowledge-of things, objects, terms, etc., whereas 
mediate knowledge is supposed to be knowledge-of truths, beliefs, 
propositions, etc. 


87 This is a point so commonplace that it is almost unnecessary to give 
examples It is pretty nearly the fundamental assumption of Bergson m 
his Introduction to Metaphysics (tr. by T. E. Hulme, New York and London 
Putnam,1912). After pointing out that metaphysics is the science which 
claims to dispense with symbols- (p. 9), i.e., of -seizing- reality without 
flnv expression translation, or symbolic representation- (idem) he denies 
tte ade P quaey of ‘‘images’’’ to represent it (pp. 13*.). “But it is even 
less possible to represent it by concepts, that is by abstract, general, or 
simple ideas.- (p. 15, italics in text). “The concept generalizes at the 
same time as it abstracts. The concept can only symbolize a particular 
property by making it common to an infinity of things. It theiefore 
always more or less deforms the property by the extension it gives it, 
etc etc - (p. 19). Cf. op. cit., pp. 65 ff. See also James, W.: Psychology, 
Briefer Course, p. 14, under “ ‘Knowledge of Acquaintance’ and Knowl¬ 
edge about.’ — 



262 University of California Publications in Philosophy. [Vol. 2 

These four points are enough to show that there are weighty 
differences between the two sorts of knowledge. If these differ¬ 
ences are ultimate, why should both immediate and mediate 
knowledge be called by the same name. If they are not ultimate, 
by what magic are they to be conjured away ? 

There are certain reasons why “knowledge” should be con¬ 
fined to “knowledge-about” or mediate knowledge. These 
reasons are, collectively, that knowledge, in the sense that it 
is something which can be called 11 true 1 ’ and 11 false ’ ’ and 
“significant,” is always mediate knowledge. This is brought 
out more clearly by a reconsideration of the four differences just 
mentioned. 

(a) It is fairly obvious that much of our knowledge is never 
doubted. I do not doubt that I am writing a doctoral thesis on 
truth; I do not doubt that I am tired of writing it; I do not 
doubt that the wind is blowing outside; I do not doubt that 
August 28 is the anniversary of Goethe’s birth; I do not doubt 
that Berkeley was sincere, etc. There are a thousand and one 
things which I do not doubt. 

But two questions at once arise. (1) Do I accept them 
because they are of a peculiarly indubitable sort of knowledge, 
and (2) have I an intellectual right not to doubt them? 

(1) The first question is answered by simply scanning the 
list of beliefs which I do not doubt. The fact that I am writing 
a doctoral thesis may be immediately given; so may my boredom; 
but the sincerity of Berkeley—which I feel just as sure of—is no 
more immediately given than the other side of the moon (of which 
I am, by the way, also just as sure). Nor was it ever immediately 
given. I get at Berkeley’s sincerity by no opening of eyes or ears, 
nor yet by a coincidence of my mind and his. It is an entirely 
different process altogether. And as in the case of most of those 
beliefs which are so certain the process is a passage from less to 
greater certainty. 

Some of the certain beliefs are admittedly cases of the immedi¬ 
ately given. But there is no ground for believing that that is 
the basis of their certainty. It is a mere accident of origin. 88 

ss For purposes of argument we are assuming that some knowledge is 
really immediate. Later on this will be questioned. 



1921] Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth. 263 


If it were more than an accident, I ought to be certain of all 
immediate knowledge. But there are plenty of sensations and 
hallucinations not only the existence of which but also the char¬ 
acter of which is in grave doubt. 89 Essentially ineffable and 
hence incommunicable, the so-called immediate must in no way 
be confused with knowledge. It is easy to say that the senses do 
not deceive us, that they are always right and we wrong in inter¬ 
preting them. The great query is, “Why should that be called 
cognition which is only a part of the materials of cognition, and 
why should that knowledge be called indubitable, interpretation 
of which is highly susceptible to error ?” If the immediate is 
indubitable, it ought to be its own “interpretation.” It ought 
to wear the garb of knowledge, if knowledge it be. It is, to be 
sure, very true that the senses do not lie; but neither do they 
speak truly. They sense. And it is only after long years of 
experience that their sensings are correctly interpreted and that 
the knowledge which results becomes indubitable. 

(2) Have I a right, now, an intellectual right, to accept these 
beliefs which seem in part to be immediately given? The very 
question of an “intellectual right * throws the whole problem of 
doubt and certainty into another cast. It is the east of Descartes, 
with his fearful searchings into the right to believe. It is the cast 
of the laboratory scientist, working year in and year out for what 
gleam of truth he can find. The twenty years of research which 
occupied Darwin before he published his hypothesis of organic 
evolution do not seem to indicate any certainty or cognitive 
value whatsoever in the given. Our intellectual right to accept 
beliefs is won and not given us. Could one feel legitimately 

8 » Almost any sensation that is unexpected will be a doubtful existent. 
Often one hears sounds and sees sights and “can scarcely believe one’s 
senses.” Yet they are excellent sensations and upon investigation often 
turn out to be genuine cases, i.e., externally stimulated. Again when one 
is at a banquet, for instance, and tastes a new sauce, one has no doubt 
about the existence of one’s gustatory sensation but has grave doubts 
about its identity. “Is it sherry, is it wine at all, is it . . . what can 
it be?” In the third place contemporary research in psychology is 
demonstrating more and more that descriptively there is no difference 
between an image and a sensation. (Y. Titchener, E. B.: Text-Book of 
Psychology , sec. 61; Angell, J. R.: Psychology, p. 152; Calkins, M. W.: 
First Book in Psychology, 4th rev. ed., New York, Macmillan, 1914, pp. 
14 ff., for agreement on the part of three authors whose fundamental 
psychological attitudes differ.) 



264 University of California Publications in Philosophy. IT°1.2 

certain of whatsoever facts are presented in immediate experi¬ 
ence, it is highly improbable that over twenty-five centuries of 
European philosophy would have been devoted to doubting it. 
It may be, as has been said above, that much of our accepted truth 
is the truth of our immediate experience. It can not be that its 
truth is based upon and guaranteed by that immediacy. 

If this be at all probable it will be seen ( b ) that the immediate 
can not be necessarily posited as the starting point of philosophy. 
Philosophy, according to the people who do posit the immediate 
as philosophy’s starting point, seems to consist of those proposi¬ 
tions which can be inferred from absolutely certain propositions. 
“What can I be absolutely certain of?” is the primal question 
of this group of thinkers. And since they believe that they can 
only be absolutely certain of the immediately given—a belief 
itself by no means immediately given—their philosophy usually 
consists of ‘ ‘ existences. ’ ’ That is, their one anxiety seems to be, 
“What really exists ?” They think perhaps that thus they are 
answering the question of ‘ ‘ What does it mean to be real ? ” As 
a matter of fact they are simply pointing to an object whose 
existence they can not doubt. 

It may very well be highly desirable to know what things 
there are whose existence can not be doubted, and we shall spend 
no more time on that point. Its importance lies in its showing 
us how limited the so-called immediate is in scope. Strictly 
speaking the immediate is mute. To smell a rose is to have an 
experience; it is not to be able to identify the smell. That is, no 
knowledge-about is involved in any knowledge-of. The most the 
immediate can say is, “Something is,” or “This is.” Hence its 
preoccupation with existence. 

But, to repeat, the reason for accepting the immediate is not 
immediately given. There is no way of inspecting or of intro¬ 
specting into the being of these axioms of method. 90 They may 
be necessary for all thinking, or they may be innate in the sense 
that they are instinctive ways of thinking, but they are certainly 
not seen nor intuited. If they were they ought to be more 

90 Cf. Royce, J.: Sources of Religious Insight , New York, Scribners, 
1912, pp. 102 ff., the “religious paradox,’’ 



1921] Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth. 265 

common, if not among “men in the street,” at least among pro¬ 
fessional and reflective philosophers. It must in the last resort, 
however, be proved by one’s biography. If anyone be convinced 
that the axioms of method, those propositions by which he guides 
his thinking, are given to him as the existence of himself or the 
existence of his sensations, etc., are said to be given to him, it is 
his bounden duty to make the experience articulate. 

But the process of making it articulate is a process of media¬ 
tion. When Descartes, who has been interpreted as an immedi- 
atist, for instance, tries to make intelligible the certainty he has 
of his own existence, he not only goes through a long process of 
initial rejections—of a high degree of mediation—but (in his 
cogito ergo sum) passes through a difficult piece of reasoning. 91 
The reasoning may not be syllogistic, but it is reasoning none the 
less. It involves classification, comparison, and the bringing of 
a particular instance under a general law. If he finds himself, 
he can not announce and identify his find until he has classified 
it. He can not classify until he has compared. And he can not 
—in a strictly logical universe—argue that doubting he exists, 
unless he assumes the validity of his reasoning process and then 
postulates the existence of a subject for all conscious processes. 
Descartes himself, to be sure, says nothing of this explicitly, nor 
was he working in a “strictly logical universe.” He was work¬ 
ing as we all work, in a tentative and groping way. The point is 
that even if he were possessed of some inward apprehension of 
himself, that inward apprehension did not become cognitive until 
it had been through the mill of mediation. Nor did Descartes 
start with certainty; he ended with it. Here, then, knowledge, 
even if it can be called “immediate” in origin, becomes “medi¬ 
ate” as soon as it finds philosophic voice. 

But even though it may be granted that the origin of knowl¬ 
edge is no ground for its differentiation, how about (c) its 
“tone.” Immediate knowledge whether sensory or intuitional, 
it is maintained, has more life, more “go” to it than mediate 
knowledge. Is it not true that men who lived in daily 

»i For an interesting note on the pre-Augustinian history of this argu¬ 
ment of Descartes, see Windelband’s Etstory of Phiolsophy, p. 277, n. 1. 



266 University of California Publications in Philosophy. IT 01 - 2 


acquaintance with Alexander the Great 1 ‘knew” him in a much 
more satisfying way than they who have simply read of him? 
Does not he who reads an author’s works “know” him infinitely 
better than he who knows merely at second hand ? 

It is very true that these observations are significant. The 
distinction between them is a very genuine distinction and one 
which has been felt by almost everyone. But in the first place 
in so far as they are both cognitive they are indistinguishable, 
and in the second place each takes on the character of the other 
in certain situations, i.e., any knowledge may be “appreciative” 
as well as ‘ 1 descriptive. ’ ’ 92 

"Whenever one expresses one’s knowledge-of, one’s appreciation 
of an object, he uses exactly the same form of expression as he 
uses when he expresses his knowledge-about. Whether I have 
been to Naples or not, my acounts are descriptive. Whether I 
have seen red or not, my accounts are descriptive. The very 
need of communication makes description essential to knowledge. 
If I have never seen red or Naples, my accounts of it—provided 
I have no imagination—will be less convincing than accounts 
which spring from “my own experience” but they will not differ 
in kind. They will both be knowledge-about. 

Similarly seeing Naples and dying would not even be knowl¬ 
edge-of Naples. The simple drinking in of all the sensory accom¬ 
paniments of the Neapolitan atmosphere would not in itself be 
more than a very delightful and varied experience. There would 


»2 The most classic account, I suppose, of the distinction between 
‘ ‘appreciation ’ ’ and * 1 description ’ ’ is Royce’s in his essay, “Physical 
Law and Freedom” (Lecture XII in The Spirit of Modern Philosophy). 
The individual, emotional (p. 389), and fleeting (p. 393) cognitive experi¬ 
ences are appreciative. They have for their objects “values,” the 
“self,” “concrete universals” (pp. 394 ff.). The permanent, the categor¬ 
izing (p. 390), the public (p. 392) cognitive experiences are descriptive. 
Their object is the world of “orderly universality” (p. 396) of “abstract 
universals.” But Royce recognizes in part the interdependence of appre¬ 
ciation and description (p. 410). This is however not complete inter¬ 
dependence, for he makes appreciation fundamental to description ( ibid .). 

For a note on the terminology employed, see The World and the Indi¬ 
vidual , vol. II, p. 27, n. 1. 

Royce ’s distinction, it must be added, is not that between “percept” 
and “concept” or between “knowledge-of” and “knowledge-about.” 
One must be careful whether knowledge should be divided through its 
objects or through its inherent epistemological differences—“tone ” for 
instance. 



1921 J Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth. 267 


be no reason to call it “knowledge” however. It might be a 
stimulus to knowledge indeed; it might be the subject matter of 
knowledge; but to identify it with knowledge produces endless 
confusion. 

Just as my “direct” experience of Naples when cognitive 
assumes all the aspects of mediate knowledge, so mediate knowl¬ 
edge itself can and does to certain men assume all the aspects of 
“direct” experience. The mature intellect can take all the 
pleasure of the most spiced sensations in the implications of a 
set of mathematical postulates. It must not be taken for granted 
that theory is a cold and lifeless affair. 93 Theory as well as 
practice has its excitements. For it is a practice in itself. The 
split made between the mediate and the immediate when we come 
to the sciences shows its artificiality more clearly than ever. 
More clearly than ever we see that the directness of the cognitive 
experience is a sign of the experience’s subject matter and that, 
in intuitional behavior, one’s attention is simply directed to 
another phase of the situation. Any cognitive experience then 
has its appreciative as well as its descriptive functions. This 
applies universally. In so far as an experience is cognitive, how¬ 
ever, it must—at least for the purposes of this essay—be identical 
with that which is called “mediate.” That does not deny the 
existence of other properties. 

But if all knowledge is appreciative as well as descriptive, by 
what right do we insist that all knowledge is at base descriptive ? 
The reason for this assertion is (d) that “immediate” knowledge 
is often assumed to be knowledge of terms, whereas “mediate” 
knowledge is assumed to be knowledge of “truths,” “facts,” 
“complexes,” “meanings.” 

If there be a consciousness of terms and a consciousness of 
truths, then it is very important for our purpose that “knowl¬ 
edge” be used for the latter alone. Just what a consciousness of 

93 Cf. Santayana, G.: Three Philosophical Poets, Cambridge, Harvard 
University, 1910, pp. 123 ff.: “There is a kind of sensualism or aestheticism 
that has decreed in our day that theory is not poetical; as if all the 
images and emotions that enter a cultivated mind were not saturated with 
theory. The prevalence of such a sensualism or aestheticism would alone 
suffice to explain the importance of the arts. The life of theory is not 
less human or less emotional than the life of sense; it is more typically 
human and more keenly emotional, etc., etc.” 



268 University of California Publications in Philosophy . [VoL 2 

a term is, other than knowledge-that the term in question is, 
does not seem easy to state. But assuming that there be such a 
thing, it is clear that in so far as it is cognitive it is knowledge 
of a “ truth, ’ ’ fact, etc. It is descriptive, for it is knowledge that 
the object exists, or is being ‘ ‘known,” or has some other prop¬ 
erty; it is mediated by whatsoever past expereince is needed to 
make it articulate; and finally it turns into a relation in which 
the object-term (relatum) is not the term aforesaid but a truth, 
or fact, or complex, etc., however one wishes to name it. No 
longer is it a case of “Subject knowing the rose,” but a case of 
“Subject knowing that the rose smells sweet,” and the like. But 
when that happens, and the experience takes on a genuinely 
cognitive character, it is seen that this cognitive character is the 
mark of mediate knowledge rather than immediate. For this 
reason, then, we assume that knowledge, properly speaking, is 
neither indubitable nor un-mediated; that it does not split into 
kinds, one of which is peculiarly worth-while and a consciousness 
of a thing,” but that it is always mediated, seldom indubitable 
—and then only after long testing—both ‘‘ appreciative ’ ’ and not, 
and is a consciousness of fact or meaning. 

So much then as a preliminary elucidation of what we mean 
by “knowledge.” 

Out of these characteristics one ought to be able to indicate 
a theory of truth. The characteristic of most importance for 
such a theory is the process of mediation. For the result of this 
process is the certainty which marks the true, and the stimulus 
to this process is the very nature of the object of knowledge. The 
theory of truth which results is, I believe, the theory at the 
bottom of voluntarism. First let us discuss the object of knowl¬ 
edge and then the process of attaining certainty. 

The object of knowledge is always something which is sym¬ 
bolized by a group of words beginning with “that.” Such a 
thing may (vide supra) be called a “fact” (Russell), an 
“‘assumption” (Meinong), a “relational complex,” etc. The 
most important property it has is organized meaning. 

Anything which has meaning is a sign. A sign’s very being 
as a sign consists in its demand for an interpretation of its 


1921] Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth. 269 


meaning. 94 But signs differ in structure. Thus the word “red” 
is a sign; it stands for a color; it points to one thing; its mean¬ 
ing is its pointing to that thing. Again the sentence, “Red is a 
color, ” is a sign. But this sign is different qua sign from the 
w r ord “red,” though it too is a collection of sounds, in that its 
meaning points to another meaning; while sign, it is also the 
interpretation of a sign. The word “red,” not the color, is a 
symbol of a color; the sentence, “Red is a color,” is an inter¬ 
pretation of this symbol. Now one of the interesting features 
of this difference is that the word “red” loses all meaning when 
considered in isolation from other words and the object it stands 
for, whereas the sentence, “Red is a color,” has some meaning 
as long as the meaning of the copula is known. “X is,” for 
instance, means not very much perhaps, but enough to warrant 
a man’s believing it or disbelieving it, affirming it or denying 
it, etc. Well, such signs as “Red is a color” are the only objects 
of knowledge. 95 

Suppose now the word ‘ 1 red ” to be uttered in the hearing of 
a company of human beings. The result would be a series of 
more or less individual reactions. These reactions might be a 
running to the fire escape, a looking about the room for the man 
whose name was announced, a query as to what had just been 
said, a query as to what is red, a wrinkling of brow over the 
unintelligibility of the whole affair, a starting for the telephone 

94 V. Pierce, C. S., ‘ ‘ Sign, * ’ in Baldwin 's Dictionary. A sign is ‘ ‘ any¬ 
thing which determines something else (its interpretant ) to refer to an 
object to which itself refers (its object) in the same way, the interpretant 
becoming in turn a sign, and so on ad infinitum.’ Cf. Royce, J.. Problem 
of Christianity , vol. II, p. 283. 

95 This is an obvious divergence from Royce, who seems to agree with 
Pierce that there are three kinds of knowledge with three kinds of 
objects: perception, conception, interpretation, with “things” (par¬ 
ticulars), universal, and signs, respectively, as objects. Whether Royce 
would have modified this doctrine had he lived is only a matter of con¬ 
jecture. The position of this paper is that perception and conception are 
not different from interpretation but that in so far as they are cognitive 
they are interpretative. This is in part, at any rate, the belief of Dewey, 
see particularly The Logic of Judgments of Practice (in Essays in Experi¬ 
mental Logic), particularly pp. 392 ff., as well as The Control of Ideas by 
Facts (op. cit.), p. 248. “Only as ‘reality' is reduced to a sign, and 
questions of its nature as sign are considered, does it get intellectual or 

cognitional status.” . . , 

“Objects” in this discussion—perhaps it is unnecessary to say 
simply means the object term, the relatum, in the symbol for the 
knowledge-relative. 



270 University of California Publications in Philosophy . [VoL 2 

to summon an alienist, etc. Different as these reactions are, they 
are alike in one respect, in that they follow the doubt that at 
once has arisen in everyone’s mind, “What does it mean?” In 
other words they are reactions which are attempted interpreta¬ 
tions of the sign. The man who runs to the fire escape probably 
does so because in his community the word ‘ ‘ red ’ ’ means ‘ ‘ Fire! ’ ’ 
The man who looks around the room for the guest whose name 
has been called, interprets it as a proper name. The man who 
asks what has been said finds the sign meaningless. Similarly 
others interpret it as a sign of a color, of insanity, etc. Some 
consider the word in itself, others the word in the social situation 
in which it arises. The unusualness of a man’s appearing in 
company and uttering one word evokes a host of reactions, all 
interpretative, and all perhaps wrong in their interpretations. 
As a matter of fact the man probably uttered the word to see 
what would happen. 

Such interpretative reactions occur not only in response to 
words. Signs of all kinds make up our cognitive life. The 
engineer on the railroad reacts to a green light in a manner quite 
different from that in which he reacts to a yellow light. A red 
ball on a flagstaff means “Skating today”; a flag at half-mast 
means a death; a crowd on a corner means something interest¬ 
ing—fight or Salvation Army; a yellow flame means sodium; a 
clenched fist means the instinct of pugnacity; a run on the bank 
means a panic; a footprint in the sand means Man Friday; John 
Doe’s finger print on the bloody handle of the dagger means 
that John Doe is the murderer; Professor Roe’s buying a new 
horse means that his salary has been raised; the blotting of my 
fountain pen means that it needs filling; the raucous scream of 
the little boy next door means that he is not in pain at all but 
is simply angry; his mother’s rushing out and petting him instead 
of spanking him means that she is a fool and will spoil him. 
There is scarcely anything about us that does not call out inter¬ 
pretations of a similar kind. And because of our interpretations 
we conduct ourselves in varying ways. 

Now each of the signs noted above is susceptible to other 
interpretations. There is no reason why a red ball should denote 


1921] Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth. 271 

skating any more than the coming of the kingdom. It is as 
arbitrary a matter—or was at its origin—as algebraic notation. 
So too with those signs which have not been invented by human 
beings. Perhaps the little boy’s mother is right in comforting 
him; perhaps his raucous cry comes because he has the whooping 
cough. Perhaps my pen blots because I have neglected to open 
it all the way out. Perhaps Professor Koe has been left a legacy 
—or is living beyond his means. Perhaps the yellow flame indi¬ 
cates an element not yet isolated. Such “misleading” interpre¬ 
tations—“misleading” is a remarkably accurate word—are as 
common as more exact ones. There is never any telling at the 
beginning how valuable your reaction may be. 

But your reaction to such signs as these is a reaction to some¬ 
thing not in itself knowledge. Though I react sympathetically 
to a woman’s tears, interpreting them—maybe automatically— 
as a sign of grief, the tears are not knowledge. The knowledge 
involved does not come until later, perhaps after long reflection. 
It may then be ‘ ‘ that tears are a sign of grief, ” or “ that it does 
not pay to comfort all women who weep,” or “that there may 
have been an element of artificiality in that woman’s tears,” 
and so on. But these objects are organized complexes, akin to 
a sentence rather than to a word. The simple sign evokes a 
response from the subject; this response is a mute or an articulate 
interpretation; the result is knowledge. The object of knowledge, 
which is the same thing as the interpreted sign, may in turn 
become a sign calling for further interpretation. 96 

This indeed usually happens. It is the process which we call 
“reflection.” When something is reflected upon, it is put in the 
harness of interpretation; its meaning is sought out more search- 
ingly; its significance is analyzed; its implications are drawn 
out. But each step in the process is an interpretative response 
to a new sign. 97 

96 See Pierce, “Sign/' op. cit.; also Royee’s Problem of Christianity, 
vol. II, pp. 150 ff. 

97 Whether the number of interpretations is infinite or not, I hesitate 
to say here. It seems safe to say that the number of times interpreta¬ 
tions must be made will be—or could be—infinite; but an interpretation 
at a later point might be a repetition of an earlier interpretation. How¬ 
ever, see Loewenberg, J.: 11 Interpretation as a Self-Representative 
Process,’’ Philosophical Review, vol. XXV, no. 3, May, 1916, pp. 420-423. 



272 University of California Publications in Philosophy. IT°l- 2 

Such an epistemology excludes all talk of sensations, of pri¬ 
mary and secondary qualities, of the “objectivity” of the physical 
world, etc. The mere sense-data are purely sub-cognitive. 
Epistemology can get along very well without them. They belong 
to psychology, and had it not been for psychology they would 
never have crept into epistemology. 

This does not deny that there are sensations, and percepts, 
and concepts. It simply denies that they are knowledge. They 
may not only exist but indeed may be the elements out of which 
all mental processes are compounded. Any psychologist who 
chooses, say, any structuralist, may take the process of interpre¬ 
tation and analyze it into sensations and reproductive imagina¬ 
tion, and what not. It is not only his privilege, it is his duty. 
But the results of his work need not prevent the epistemologist 
from continuing to talk about “interpretation.” We have 
learned recently that hunger is “nothing but” the contraction 
of the walls of the stomach. 98 But that does not prevent us 
either from being hungry or from quite accurately describing 
our condition as hunger. There are probably as many psycho¬ 
logical interpretations of “interpretation” as there are psychol¬ 
ogies. Why should we sacrifice our given for the sake of another 
man’s riddles. The epistemologist’s problem is the comport¬ 
ment of knowledge, its logic, its validity, and the like. True its 
psychology is as interesting as any other problem; but in so far 
as its psychology is an analysis of knowledge, it is of no par¬ 
ticular bearing on the results of epistemology. If its psychology 
affects the validity, say, of knowledge, then it might be of great 
importance. But what people have done in the past is to assume 
a specific psychology and interpret epistemology in its terms. 
Most of the problems of recent epistemological debate, for in¬ 
stance, seem to be bequests of sensationalism. There is no reason 
whatsoever for the acceptance of sensationalism as final. It is 
better to start with one feature of our conscious life—knowledge 
—and move on from that. Such a method may contribute to 
psychology, may be incorporated in psychology. But features of 
a psychology more analytic than this feature will be irrelevant. 

08 See Cannon, W. B.: Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear, and Page, 
New York and London, Appleton, 1915, pp. 251 ff. 



1921] Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth. 273 


It is possible, for instance, for a chemist to make a study of 
the comportment of water, just as some chemists specialize in 
carbon compounds. Now it might turn out that all substances 
were merely arrangements of homogeneous Democritean atoms. 
Qualitatively these atoms might be all the same. Would it be 
incumbent upon the water-chemist to reinterpret all his results 
in terms of these ultimate atoms, to deny that his water was 
anything more than an arrangement of these atoms? Or would 
it be incumbent on the atom-chemist to do his best to interpret 
the comportment of water in his own terms and let the water- 
chemist alone ? The epistemologist is no more forced to * 'reduce 91 
knowledge to the non-cognitive than the social psychologist is 
forced to reduce society to individuals. 

This sounds as if the results of psychology were somehow 
contradictory to things which we have said. On the contrary 
the whole body of behavioristic and functionalistic psychology 
is in quite as much accord as sensationalistic psychology is in 
discord. The results of neither are of much importance to us, 
but it is interesting to note the early researches of Mr. Dewey 
in perception," and the very recent work of Mrs. de Laguna, 100 
which tends to confirm them, as well as the whole theory of 
brain-integration. 101 


99 I refer particularly to “The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology ,’’ 
Psychological Review, 1896, vol. Ill, pp. 347-370. 

100 de Laguna, G. A.: “Sensation and Perception,'' Journal of Phil¬ 
osophy, vol. XIII, no. 20, Sept. 28, 1916, pp. 533-537; ibid., vol XIII, no. 23, 
Nov. 9, 1916, p. 617-630. 

101 Historically the voluntaristic theory of knowledge—so far only 
hinted at—is a development from idealism rather than from British 
realism. Immediately its sources are obviously Dewey and Royce. 

The beginning of the movement which culminates in these thinkers, 
as of every other movement, is in Kant. The great discovery of Kant 
seems to have been that knowledge is not merely receptive but is essenti¬ 
ally active and creative. Before Kant the mind appeared as a sort of 
mosaic, one group of whose stones was knowledge. After Kant the mind 
had a chance to grow, not by the simple addition of new pieces of mental 
elements, but by a sort of exfoliation. Not that every psychologist gave 
it this chance. We had associationism still to come. But the gate for an 
activistic epistemology was open. 

With Kant, as with the contemporary voluntarist, knowledge was not 
merely a subject matter. It was a subject matter organized according to 
definite laws—the categories. These laws, to be sure, were identical for 
all minds; the individual difference was a factor to be eliminated. But 
they were laws of knowledge and not of subject matter. The synthetic 
work of the subject was a handling of the things known. This is Kant's 



274 University of California Publications in Philosophy. [Vol. 2 


Dismissing this question as it stands, let us return to our real 
issue. If knowledge is the interpretation of a sign, in what sense 
does it become true or false? By what sign in turn is that 
indicated? This is the second of our main difficulties, the first 
of which was the stimulus to interpretation. 

Roughly speaking, an interpretation becomes true in the 
process of mediation. The most satisfactory interpretation of a 
sign will be the true interpretation, the least satisfactory the 


“Copernican revolution” and essentially it is the program of the 
voluntarist. 

“Essentially,” however, must not be taken too seriously. For Kant’s 
interpretation of the noetic act was far from that of our contemporary 
thinkers. For him there still remained prominent traces of a receptivistic 
theory of knowledge. The causally operative things-in-themselves show 
evidence of the Lockean—the Democritean—assumption that knowledge 
is a sort of impressed idea produced by a non-mental and “external” 
world. Their “unknowable-ness ” again indicates the same thing, the 
confusion of “knowledge” with intuitive ( anschauliche ) presentations. 
But these things, important as they were in the history of Kant’s episte¬ 
mology, are not of course the gifts of Kant to the development of 
philosophy. His great gift was the mind’s interest in knowing. It was 
no longer an impartial bystander. 

The impetus after Kant towards voluntarism worked itself out in 
identifying the noetic act. The interests of the post-Kantians, though 
different from Kant’s and from one another’s, after all centered about 
the nature of this deed. In Fichte particularly you find such an interest. 
Fichte with his primal fiat, creative, volitional, and cognitive, above all 
might be called the most genuine ancestor of the voluntarist. But 
Fichte, because of his fundamental interest in metaphysics, made the very 
mistake of the sensationalists. Just as the sensationalist made and makes 
every contact of the mind with its objects an example of knowledge, so 
Fichte widened the scope of cognition as to make it not only creative of 
knowing but creative of the very world in which it was situated. When 
the subject becomes the maker of its objects, and when subject and 
object exhaust the universe, there is absolutely nothing left for the 
epistemologist to say. His subject matter has lost all meaning. It is no 
new lesson in philosophy that what you can say about everything is not 
worth saying. But for all that, Fichte did emphasize the Kantian 
attributes of cognition and explicitly made it an act of will, a moral affair. 

The Hegelian contribution will be clearer later on. It is not so much 
in the matter of individual cases of knowing as in his theory of the 
active character of knowledge as knowledge. Dropping the details of 
the dialectic process, we can see in its general form two characters 
which will prove to be of particular value to our discussion. One is the 
theory that no bit of knowledge stands on its own feet, and the other— 
which for Hegel probably follows from the first—is the theory that truth 
is an aim, something to be achieved. These two points as developed by 
almost all Hegelians are, it must be admitted, very different from their 
analogs in contemporary voluntarism. Hegel’s reasons which sub¬ 
stantiate them, moreover, are not the reasons of contemporary volun¬ 
tarism. But taken as very general epistemological points of view they 
are practically identical. 

Passing over the thinkers who elaborate the views we have just sug¬ 
gested we come to the voluntarists of today. These thinkers are best 
represented for our purposes—which are not metaphysical purposes—by 



1921] Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth. 275 


false. An interpretation which is neither satisfactory nor un¬ 
satisfactory—which is indifferent—is meaningless. That this is 
not mere schematism may he seen if the growth of a sign’s mean¬ 
ing is carefully observed in any case. As it happens there are 
very few meaningless interpretations, for the phrase is almost 
self-contradictory. The only indifferent objects of knowledge 
are probably those which have as yet incited no reflection on the 
part of the subject. Propositions taken from technical meta¬ 
physics and offered to an untrained mind will receive just this 
verdict. If such a mind is honest, it will say that it does not know 
whether the proposition is true or false because it does not know 


Dewey and Royce. Dewey and Royce are in many ways diametrically 
opposed. Their ethics, their metaphysics, and their general way of doing 
things seem sprung from mutually hostile forces. But in both these men 
there is an identical account of what in general our ideas are and how 
they become true. 

For both an idea is a “plan of action.” This means that ideas do not 
stand for, do not represent—even in the political sense—“objects,’’ 
things, particulars. It means that they are purposive and express what 
a man wants to do. Thus, for Royce, an idea of a house is neither a 
percept, a concept, nor an image of a house. It is essentially a plan of 
something to live in, something which will shelter us, something to invest 
in. It is thus, as was so clearly brought out in his Problems of Christianity, 
an interpretation of a sign. Interpretation in his earlier work had been 
called the “internal meaning’’ of ideas, the purpose whose “external 
meaning” fulfilled it. 

In Dewey we have a presentation of this thought, strikingly similar 
not only in meaning but in phraseology. “It (an idea) is not some little 
psychical entity or piece of consciousness-stuff, but is the interpretation of 
the locally present environment in reference to its absent portion, that part 
to which it is referred as another part so as to give a view of the whole.” 
(“The Control of Ideas by Facts,” in Essays in Experimental Logic, p. 239. 
Italics in the text.) Also, as in Royce, ideas have an external meaning 
which is the fulfillment of their intentions. But whereas in Royce the 
fulfillment of an idea’s purpose sometimes seems to be a “particular” 
(World and the Individual, vol. I, pp. 26 f.), in Dewey it is an act. The 
Objects of Thought (in Essays in Experimental Logic), p. 171, says: “So 
much for the thought-content or meaning as having a validity of its own. 
It does not have it as isolated or given or static; it has it in its dynamic 
reference, its use in determining further movement of experience. In 
other words, the ‘meaning,’ having been selected and made up with 
reference to performing a certain office in the evolution of a unified 
experience, can be tested in no other way than by discovering whether 
it does what it was intended to do and what it purports to do.” 

From this beginning the paths of Dewey and Royce diverge. For 
Royce’s ethical and metaphysical interests led him to seek the nature of 
a universe which was known in this way. He early avowed that it was 
by an examination of our ideas that we could best learn the character of 
our world. Dewey’s interests, on the other hand, have been of a more 
homely nature. They have led him into defining the noetic act psycholog¬ 
ically and biologically and into defending his instrumentalism against the 
attacks of classicists. Consequently his fundamental agreement with Royce 
was only naturally obscured. 



276 University of California Publications in Philosophy. [Vol. 2 

what the proposition means. It is only by a detailed interpreta¬ 
tion of the proposition as a whole and in part that its meaning 
is elicited. Then only does the reflective mind become capable 
of deciding. Such is exactly the case with “propositional func¬ 
tions, ” the only one example usually given of meaningless propo¬ 
sitions. But this obscures and mystifies the issue. Meaning is a 
human affair; it occurs in our daily lives; there are plenty of 
propositions equally meaningless. We do not know whether the 
propositional function, x is a man, is true until we know the 
value of x. Similarly we do not know whether the proposition, 
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” is true until we know the 
values of “beauty” and “truth.” 

But whence arises this quality of being satisfactory? How 
does it account for “the control of ideas by facts”? 102 

There are, one may say, two directions in which one’s curiosity 
may lead one. Stimulated by any sign, one’s curiosity may put 
the questions, ‘ ‘ What is it ? ” or “ What shall I do ? ” The answer 
to the first sort of question is a “descriptive” judgment; the 
answer to the second, a “practical” judgment. Both impulses 
are productive of knowledge; both are interpretative. On hear¬ 
ing a sound in the forest, one may be prompted to identify it, 
to interpret it as the wind, or as an animal, or as a human being, 
or as an illusion. Or again one may be prompted to flee from it 
or to approach it—to use the classical dichotomy of human 
reactions. Both of these are interpretative, and one of the most 
important features of the situation is that they are both one 
total reaction. The descriptive judgment and the practical 
judgment when they actually occur are inextricably interwoven. 

It would be impossible for me to resolve to flee from a bear 
unless I were able to interpret it as a bear. But conversely it 
would be impossible to identify it as a bear unless I should feel 
inclined to run from it. Were I to feel every impulse to approach 
and pet it and ask it to “sit up” and “roll over” and “pray,” 

I should never dream of calling it a bear. It is just where this 
vital connection has been overlooked that error creeps in. The 
child who tries to pick a bumble bee and says it is a pretty flower, 


102 Obviously Dewey’s phraseology. See note 101. 



1921] Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth. 277 

lias not yet made differentiating practical experiments upon her 
pretty flower. The woman who wakes in the dead of night and 
boldly asks the swaying curtains what they want has not identified 
what she sees. One is a case of false description, the other of 
false practice. 

But if the child finds that she can pick the bee and smell its 
fragrant odor and put it in a vase with the rest of her nosegay, 
she will have gone a long way toward verifying her initial inter¬ 
pretation that the bee is a flower. So if the suddenly awakened 
woman finds that the curtains mutter, “Hand out your jewels/’ 
or jump through the window, or gag her, she too will have 
verified her practical judgment, ‘ ‘ I ought to question him. ’ ’ The 
child’s descriptive interpretation involved a series of future and 
contemporaneous acts; the woman’s practical interpretation 
involved a definite description. 

Moreover the child would have been unable either to verify 
or disprove her descriptive interpretation without the aid of 
experimentation. Her interest in this case happened to be 
avowedly practical. She was in the garden to gather a bouquet. 
But even if she were there like a latter-day and more thorough¬ 
going Adam, simply to name the flowers, she could never have 
identified either flower or animal, or indeed any of the phenomena 
which throng a garden, without the application of tests, criteria 
of individual differentiation. Simply looking—assuming that 
looking is a mere reception—would never do the work. As I 
look out of my window at a pine tree nearby, I can not tell if 
that pointed black object near the top is a pine cone or a crow 
or for that matter a German submarine. It is by waiting for 
further developments, by experimenting, by inferring, by inter¬ 
preting, that I discover what it is. A submarine would not be so 
small; why should it appear in Carmel, California; what business 
has it in the top of a tree? So too I work over my other inter¬ 
pretations until I verify one and disprove the others. But my 
verification of this simple description is a bit of practice. 

Just as I can not answer the question, “What is it?” without 
experimenting and thus deciding upon a plan of action, so I can 
not answer the question, “What ought I to do?” without being 


278 University of California Publications in Philosophy. [VoL 2 


aware of the nature of the sign to which I am reacting, or at 
least forming an hypothesis about it. Ought I not in the face 
of the black thing, which grows more menacing as twilight draws 
on, to do something to protect myself and property against pos¬ 
sible danger? It has a strange look about it; it is extremely 
ominous. It is best in these days of atrocities to be ready for 
anything. But my hands are tied until I can identify what I 
see, until I can make a descriptive interpretation of that sign. 
If it be after all nothing but a giant pine cone, then I have 
nothing to fear; but if it be a winged submarine, waiting only 
for darkness to do its deadly errand, I had better crawl into the 
cyclone cellar and telephone for the police. 

But how am I to find out? And here I find myself back 
where I started, realizing that descriptive interpretations are 
possible only through practical interpretations and that practical 
interpretations are equally dependent on descriptive interpreta¬ 
tions. 

Since this is so it will be seen that the verification of any 
idea, the interpretation of any sign, is a very complex process, 
with descriptions and experiments thoroughly interwoven. How¬ 
ever simple the question, a host of experiments must be per¬ 
formed before it will be solved. And were one to justify his 
every belief, one’s life would be too short for the complete 
verification of one of them . 103 It is a commonplace, of course, 
that we do not stop to verify our every belief. We have short 
cuts to knowledge and they seldom lead us astray. Interpretation 
of certain signs becomes a matter of habit with us, like reading, 
and we do it instantaneously. Sometimes we are misled, just as 
when reading a foreign language we mistranslate. Our mis¬ 
translation makes a momentary sense ’ ’ and we do not discover 
our error until we have read the whole paragraph. Sometimes 
indeed it leads us to new misconstructions and where only a 
sentence was initially a blunder, a whole paragraph now becomes 


10 3 It is just this “practical” difficulty which makes Royce, in his own 
words, an absolute pragmatist. ’» V. Wm. James and Other Essays p 254 
No idea—no purpose—is ever completely fulfilled in any man's earthly 
hfe. The complete fulfillment of all purposes is in that ultimate union 
of internal and external meaning which is the Absolute. This doctrine 
is, it goes without saying, due to other considerations besides the 
pragmatic nature of an idea. 



1921 1 Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth . 279 

distorted. Gradually our error dawns upon us. The paragraph 
is out of keeping with the general context. Something is wrong. 
The beautiful faith of a reader knows it is not his author. And 
so he runs back over his ground to discover his own misinterpre¬ 
tation. 

The same thing occurs in social daily life and in the labora¬ 
tory. The same sort of blunders, of errors, of misinterpretation; 
the same way of discovering them, and of correcting them; the 
same way of verifying what is suspected to be true makes the 
scientist no strangely isolated intellect, thinking in a way of his 
own which is radically different from the “plain man’s,” but an 
intellect one in structure and method with his fellow man’s, less 
fallible because more careful of each step. 

The care enters at the beginning of the scientist’s work. He 
is more fully conscious than the untrained thinker of what his 
problem demands. He tries, let us say, to find out if poverty does 
usually lead to drink, as he hears sociologists say. Before he makes 
any investigations whatsoever he must know what facts are rele¬ 
vant and what are not. He must have a technique for the deter¬ 
mination of his phenomena; of causation, etc. He must decide 
what would be true if his hypothesis were true. He must know 
what would never be true if his hypothesis were true. Only then 
can he proceed to verify it. This problem forms a little universe 
of its own in which he must live until its solution. If he can not 
find such a universe, which means if there are no signs of its 
existence, then his hypothesis is false or he has misunderstood 
the problem. It will be seen at once that in difficulty alone does 
this problem differ from any other. 104 

But it is curiosity stimulated by the sign of a sign, by an 
already given interpretation. It is the curiosity stimulated by 
an object of knowledge, an organized complex, and not by a 
simple sign, a “term.” It is, to give an example, the curiosity 
which puts the question, “What does ‘Beauty is truth’ mean?” 
It is not the curiosity which is stimulated by the contemplation 
of beauty itself and leads a man to frame for the first time an 
hypothesis about its nature. 


104 y. Introduction to Dewey's Essays in Experimental Logic , pp. 35 ff. 



280 University of California Publications in Philosophy. [Yol. 2 

That type of curiosity seems more primitive, more elemental. 
In so far as it leads to interpretation it is no different from the 
other. Both are reactions to signs, but the signs to which they 
are reactions are different. Its elemental quality can be observed 
not only in children but in certain of the higher animals. Its 
satisfaction moreover comes to pass in the same way as the satis¬ 
faction of more sophisticated curiosity. It always occurs through 
doing something to something and seeing what happens. It is 
defying the law, putting metals in acid, imagining the behavior 
of two characters in interaction (a la Zola), sticking a pin into 
a toy balloon. So much is the result of curiosity. But if no 
interpretation is made afterwards, no knowledge has been ob¬ 
tained. For knowledge—it can not be said too often—is a mature 
and thoughtful affair. It must not be imagined to be the posses¬ 
sion of every psychological specimen. Some people never learn 
from experience or instruction and there is no reason why 
epistemology should not exclude fools from its discussion at the 
outset. Fools exist nevertheless, and the fact that they must be 
excluded from epistemological discussion is a very important 
delimitation of epistemology’s subject matter. (Yet I have no 
doubt that many an absolute cretin has a rich sensory life, much 
richer than that of our thinkers.) 

When we experiment we must frame some hypothesis which 
we are about to test if our experimentation is not to be blind. 
And the hypothesis—like all doubts and questions—is determina¬ 
tive of one answer—its content in categorical form. The process 
of proof then is a fully conscious analog of the mediation of any 
interpretation. In proof we know what the solution must be. 
If the proof “comes out right,” it is valid and our hypothesis 
or theorem or thing to be proved is verified. It only comes out 
right if it does verify our hypothesis. In less formal matters a 
similar procedure takes place. For instance I resolve to work 
just till nine o’clock. My clock now indicates eight fourteen. 
That means that I have still forty-six minutes of work. Already 
I have made an hypothesis, “My clock is right.” But my clock 
has not been keeping good time lately. How shall I test my 
hypothesis ? In this little room there are no other clocks. But 


1921 ] Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth. 281 

I can hear the town clock strike the hour. I shall wait then and 
if the town clock strikes nine synchronously with nine of my 
clock, my hypothesis will be verified. True the town clocks may 
not be right. My problem, however, is not concerned with them. 
For my purposes they constitute a court of high enough appeal. 
My hypothesis, “My clock is right” selects, as it were, the verifi¬ 
cation, “If it agrees with the town clocks.” I wait and see and 
interpret what sounds I hear. Of course I may err. And of 
course I am using sense-data. But error is common to mankind 
in this complex life and will be detected in much the same way 
as truth. As for the sense-data, they are decidedly present and 
if I am not careful I may be deceived by firebells ringing at the 
same time. The sense-data are not my verification. My verifica¬ 
tion is my interpretation of them. There are plenty of sense-data 
about; I choose however certain ones which mean a certain thing. 

This interpretation of my clock’s being synchronous with the 
town clocks is the most satisfactory interpretation. It was 
selected by the question, “Is my clock right?” If my clock is 
right, it will be synchronous with the town clocks. If it is 
synchronous it will point to nine o’clock while they are striking 
nine o ’clock. Such a procedure is as much an experiment as any 
that goes on in laboratories. And as such it furnishes an excel¬ 
lent example of a typical cognitive situation with signs, inter¬ 
pretations, hypotheses, experimentation, verification. A perhaps 
incomplete analysis of it would be: signs, ( a ) behavior of the 
hands on a clock dial, ( b) the striking of the hour, both meaning 
the time of day, (c) the synchronous-ness of my clock and the 
town clocks, meaning their ‘ ‘ agreement ’ ’; interpretations, of the 
meanings derived from these signs; hypotheses, ( a ) that the town 
clocks are right, (&) that my clock’s agreement with them is a 
sign of its accuracy; experimentation, framing these hypotheses, 
testing my clock by means of them, waiting for results; verifica¬ 
tion, in the hoped-for agreement which will occur later. 

What actually happens of course is no rigid method of re¬ 
search such as is indicated here. I suddenly decide to stop work 
at nine o’clock. I look at my clock and say, “Forty-six minutes 
to go.” I then wonder whether my clock is right since it has 


282 University of California Publications in Philosophy. IT°l. 2 


been fast recently. “I will be able to tell at nine,” I think and 
let the matter rest there. But for all my method is rather slip¬ 
shod, it is much more like a real piece of verification than any of 
the theories of truth considered in this paper provide. 

But now someone will say, “You beg the question entirely by 
concealing the fact that you are looking for what actually, really, 
exists, and not for what ‘satisfies’ you.” This objection means 
that voluntaristic theories disregard the question of truth and 
covertly introduce the test of correspondence. This is no doubt 
true of some writers with leanings toward voluntarism. But the 
theory as here developed does not overlook that difficulty. When 
it says, “At nine o’clock I shall be able to tell whether my clock 
is right or not,” it does not mean that someone has now an 
“idea” of nine o’clock (idea in the sense of a complex of images) 
and that at a real nine o’clock there will be a fact—non-imagin- 
able—corresponding to it, whence the truth of my judgment, 
“My clock is right.” It means that the words “actually” and 
“really exists” must themselves be interpreted and that their 
interpretation will be like all others through signs; that these 
interpretations may be faulty or may be nice enough to be suc¬ 
cessful at their first formulation. For my purposes I find the 
town clocks fairly reliable; in Konigsberg the people relied on 
Kant. It is all a matter of criteria. In the long run the town 
clocks may deteriorate. Their deterioration will however be 
given to us by means of certain signs. Nor will everyone agree 
about them. But until the matter is settled new criteria of 
chronometric accuracy will have to be found. Now Konigsberg 
does without Kant. 

These criteria seem, judging by many opponents of voluntar¬ 
ism, to be necessarily vulgar. “Voluntarism” then becomes a 
synonym for a shallow laissez-faire policy of anti-intellectualism. 
Since truth is “the most satisfactory interpretation,” since it is 
“cash value” that counts, “satisfactory” must perforce be “any¬ 
thing one wants to believe,” anything that is opportune, that 
“pays.” Great as is the justice of such criticism, on the whole 
the voluntaristic school—if school there be—has no lower stand¬ 
ards of truth than any other school. A sympathetic reading of 


1921] Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth. 283 

its works will show an ideal as lofty as that of the most traditional 
non-voluntarist. Voluntarism simply insists that whatever the 
standards, they are standards, and ought to be recognized as 
such. The truth of the consistency theory, of absolutistic ideal¬ 
ism, etc., etc., must be tested as all truth is tested, it insists, and 
moreover the tests implied by these theories are themselves 
expressions of the same will to interpret as the tests of voluntar¬ 
ism. Are they not in so far true ? In so far they are. But if a 
theory of truth must be tested by the four criteria suggested at 
the outset of this paper, they are not. 

The selection of the four criteria was not justified when it 
was stated. It is perhaps proper at this point that some justifica¬ 
tion be made. But what can the justification be ? If one begins 
one finds one’s self in a totally different field from the field of 
truth. Take the criterion of self-criticism, for instance. This 
criterion is that every theory of truth must be true for the reasons 
it assigns itself. This seems a plausible enough demand. One 
makes it because one says to one’s self, ‘ ‘ My own theory, if it is 
going to repay the labor of constructing it, must be true. But if 
it is true it will be because it is true. That reflexive action is self- 
criticism. ’ ’ Now this clearly assumes that truth is homogeneous, 
that there are not several kinds of truth, one for one kind of 
proposition, one for another. When the possibility of hetero¬ 
geneous truth is thought over, it does not seem impossible. It 
would make most critical arguments superfluous, for no one would 
be able to tell what kind of truth was involved in an opponent’s 
point of view. But that would not be a very telling reason 
against it if one wanted to press the matter. Perhaps arguments 
are futile, and for that very reason. The answer to such a 
criticism must be pragmatic. If arguments are futile, why argue 
about the nature of truth ? Why insist that the truth of such an 
argument is binding upon voluntarism ? 

The canon of self-criticism, then, is like all canons by no 
means self-evident. If it fails to make the meaning of truth 
clear and practical, it were better dropped. If it contradicts the 
knowledge which long experience has given us, it had better 
be dropped. Its justification must come about through the 


284 University of California Publications in Philosophy. [VoL 2 

application of the theory which asserts its need. The same thing 
holds good of the other three canons', catholicity, generality, and 
applicability. Their justification similarly will be demonstrated 
only through use. No claim is made in this essay that they are 
self-evident. 

The theory of truth, now, which these criteria are asked to 
test is in summary as follows: Truth is a property of the inter¬ 
pretations of signs. Anything which has meaning is a sign. 
Interpretations have two consequences, mutually dependent, the 
first an identification of the sign, the second an activity on the 
part of the interpreter. The interpretation of a sign is not blind, 
it aims at fulfilling a purpose, which purpose may be called a 
plan of action (an ideal). Interpretations are tested for truth 
by experimenting upon them and seeing whether they fulfill 
their purposes or not. This can best be done by formulating 
the purpose as explicitly as possible. Such a formulation will 
provide the criteria of a satisfactory interpretation. The meet¬ 
ing of the criteria must itself be submitted to other tests and 
so on. 

One of the first charges to be brought against such a theory 
of truth is that it is too specific. Other theories have been 
rejected because they have presupposed a sensationalistic psy¬ 
chology, a particular theory of relations, a receptivistic episte¬ 
mology. Why is it any more permissible to assume an activistic 
epistemology ? 

Our main presupposition was that foreshadowed in an earlier 
chapter, namely that a proposition is a sign, and that all objects 
of knowledge are signs. Our statement that knowledge is propo¬ 
sitional was not so much a presupposition as a limitation of our 
field of discussion. The symbolic character of the objects of 
knowledge in itself may be disputed. It arose from the attempt 
to identify the act which a great part of modern epistemology 
believes to be the knowledge relation. But any receptive theory 
of knowledge presupposes so much more that the choice was 
easily made. Receptivism is false if ordinary sensationalism—or 
‘ ‘ idea-psychology ’ ’—is false. But knowledge may be the act of 
interpreting and the mind may be a substance, a mosaic of 


1921] Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth. 285 

neutral entities , 9 9 an integration of reflex arcs, a system of mean¬ 
ings, an epiphenomenal ‘ ‘ accompaniment 9 ’ of cortical events. 
For we have presupposed no theory of mind. All we have done is 
to take an act certainly noetic and certainly existent and discuss 
it. These theories may analyze it as they will. That is their 
affair. They can not deny its existence. Again knowledge may 
be the interpretative act and the world be monistic, pluralistic, 
dualistic; material, spiritual, neutral. "We have presupposed no 
“metaphysics.” True, our whole account may be the account of 
an illusion or of the very core of reality. We can study it in 
either event. 

This may not be sufficient generality for everyone. Let his 
be the task to construct a theory more general. 

The catholicity of the theory is perhaps more easily seen. 
Falsity, if it is to be satisfactorily accounted for, must not only 
be non-truth, it must be anti-truth. It is only a theory of truth 
based on an activistic theory of knowledge that can provide such 
a falsity. For in receptivism the false is received as well as the 
true. The false is then usually ignored or treated as an “ illusion 9 ’ 
or made an impression without a stimulus. A theory which looks 
to the future can afford to give falsity an important part to play. 
An interpretation is false which does not satisfy any of the 
criteria of satisfaction. Such interpretations might be called 
“misleading” or “unsuccessful” or “useless” as one chooses. 
The important point is that false interpretations—when they are 
known to be false—openly do not satisfy the inquiring mind. 
They raise more doubts than they should. They can not be 
verified. Experiments suggested by them are sterile. 

For example, the proposition, “My watch is hanging from the 
ceiling,” is false. To prove its falsity I must according to 
voluntarism make an hypothesis. My hypothesis, let us select 
the usual one, is “If my watch were hanging from the ceiling, 
I could look up and see it.” I perform the experiment with 
negative results. My hypothesis, to be sure, may be questioned. 
The watch may have become invisible. In that case its presence 
on the ceiling would have to be detected by some other method. 
But whatever method were chosen, it could be tested in a similar 


way. 


286 University of California Publications in Philosophy. IT°1.2 


This proposition, to be sure, is one which is known at the 
outset to be false. Perhaps a fairer example would be one whose 
truth or falsity is unknown to begin with, which is proved to be 
false. It is impossible for us to give such an example in a paper 
of this sort, because any actual disproof of a proposition—whose 
truth or falsity is genuinely unknown—requires an elaborate 
training in the field to which it pertains. The result of our work 
might be merely to substantiate the proposition. Consequently 
the best thing to do is to turn to history. We find there scientists 
constantly disproving propositions. But their method is one in 
kind if not in complexity with the little example given above. 
If the doubtful proposition were true, the scientist says, certain 
others would be true. If it were false, certain others would be 
true. The tests are then made for the “others ,’ 9 which others 
are taken as signs of the proposition’s falsity. 

Again an objection will be raised that this procedure assumes 
the truth of certain propositions. It surely does up to a certain 
point, but that can not be taken as a confutation of it. Nobody 
ever begins any inquiry at the point where certain beliefs are 
absolutely true, undeniable, irrefutable. We are bound to assume 
the truth of certain beliefs if we are to advance at all. We might 
with a fair show of reasonableness be asked to start with the 
irrefutable, but the slightest experience with the elements of 
logic and metaphysics ought to convince one that these absolute 
truths are the hardest things in the world to demonstrate in such 
a way that anyone will believe them. It is not the results of a 
science that lack supporters, it is the beginnings. Hence it is a 
perfectly honest method to prove falsity via truth, since at any 
time one can be called upon to justify one’s truth. 

It has already been shown how voluntarism accounts for 
meaningless propositions. A proposition has 'meaning only in so 
far as it is a sign. But like many other signs it acquires or is 
given meaning. Such signs are traditionally called “symbols” 
in distinction to “icons” and “indices.” The strange thing 
about propositions is that their meaning as a whole is different 
from the meaning of their parts. This is most accurately illus¬ 
trated in the phenomenon of idioms. “What’s the matter?” if 


1921 ] Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth . 287 

taken word by word is almost unintelligible. But even idioms 
have meaning for someone and it may very truly be said that no 
sign is both a sign and meaningless. As soon as a proposition 
becomes meaningless it might be called no longer a sign. 

The applicability of voluntarism must be tested to be demon¬ 
strated. Offhand we can only say, and it is an important thing 
to say, that it does not (like the correspondence theory, for 
example) preclude applicability. It aims at that point before 
all others; nay, it almost is that point. One must, to determine 
if any proposition is true, determine first the direction in which 
it is leading him, and second how far he can follow it. This is 
the only sign of truth that we have, namely, as William James 
put it, that the proposition can be verified. 105 This sounds like 
a circular definition. It is not circular, however, because for 
voluntarism verification determines the verity, whereas for other 
theories, verity permits of verification. 

Finally, can voluntarism be criticised by its own criteria? 
This is the most potent question of all, and it must be admitted, 
the one by which any theory of truth stands or falls in the long 
run. 

To begin with the theory is partly unsatisfactory for two 
reasons, both of which are very persuasive though not unanswer¬ 
able. 

(1) Voluntarism itself has no great following. True beliefs 
usually excite more or less general social agreement. The beliefs 
of “science/’ for example, are no sooner published with a record 
of their verification than they are incorporated into the great 
mass of belief. The beliefs of “common-sense” moreover pro¬ 
mote a really formidable body of supporters. But some idealists 
and realists alike reject the doctrine of voluntarism. 

The criterion of the consensus gentium is often scorned by 
theorists and often worshipped. There is a good degree of justice 
in both attitudes, for it is at once disgusting how the body of 
opinion can uphold what years of research have shown to be 
erroneous and wonderful how the simplest phrases of an ancient 
language seem to anticipate the results of these same researches. 

io5 Pragmatism, New York, Longmans, 1913, p. 201. “True ideas are 
those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify, etc.” 



288 University of California Publications in Philosophy. IT°1.2 

Every writer knows how convincing a demonstration of his ideas 
is their reflection in common speech and proverbial philosophy. 
And often there is enough insight to set philosophers pondering 
over the reasons for it. So that for all it is not an irrefragable 
argument, it should not be swept aside. 

In the first place, the reason why voluntarism as it is mani¬ 
fested in pragmatism has produced so much hostility is that only 
one person, namely Vaihinger, has developed the theory by itself. 
James and Schiller have largely developed it as a polemic against 
supposed antagonism. This was no doubt inevitable since the 
theory was supposedly revolutionary, but it certainly prevented 
its classification. The exposition by James is picturesque and 
delightful but it is almost impossible to know exactly what it is 
all about. Where the literary amateur rejoices, the student of 
philosophy despairs. 

Dewey and Royce did indeed develop their theories of 
knowledge in relative independence. But Royce’s metaphysical 
absolutism (which is his solution of the peculiarly voluntaristic 
difficulties) is usually more prominent to a reader than his 
voluntarism. Dewey in his turn recognizes how his earlier 
accounts were colored by the terminology of his day, which was 
the terminology of the Post-Kantians. 100 Such an accident only 
too frequently shunts a reader’s attention from the meaning of 
the theory itself to the meaning of the words. 

Because of the usual reluctance to change on the part of men 
who have made up their minds, more time has been spent in 
battling over a doctrine which has never been understood than 
in finding out what it was all about. Hence nobody seems to be 
quite sure what voluntarism is beyond the fact that it is false. 

(2) Asa result of the general obscurity and of the intellectual 
license obscurity always encourages, scores of writers who call 
themselves “pragmatists” or “voluntarists” have sprung into 
prominence because they have the gift of facile expression. Of 
these nothing shall be said here except that their existence is the 
strongest evidence of the pragmatic unsatisfactoriness of prag¬ 
matism. 


ice See Introduction to Essays in Experimental Logic, p. 26. 



1921 ] Boas: An Analysis of Certain Theories of Truth. 289 

But both of these arguments are outweighed by certain favor- 
able arguments. 

(1) A voluntaristic theory of truth, as suggested in this paper, 
demands a statement of the tests a theory must meet before it is 
verified. This statement was made at the outset of our inquiry. 
We have tried to show how voluntarism meets three of these four 
tests. Since they are all four tests of satisfactoriness and since 
satisfactoriness is one of the four, the meeting of three of them 
ought to be pretty good evidence of the meeting of the fourth. 
But there are subsidiary reasons. 

(2) The voluntaristic epistemology does away with the 
trouble-breeding distinction between scientific and philosophic 
knowledge. The difference between scientific and philosophic 
subject-matter and the difference in the attitudes of the disci¬ 
plines themselves presented a puzzle to men who believed 
knowledge to be a sort of revelation. Since the scientist was 
talking about things” which were sensible and the philosopher 
about general “ truths, ” etc., the philosopher was said to be 
embarked upon an enterprise of “evaluation” or of “explana¬ 
tion, ’ 9 whereas the scientist simply ‘ ‘ described. ’ ’ The scientist’s 
knowledge was then conceded to be good enough in its way, but 
it told you ‘how,” not “why.” Philosophers then either evalu¬ 
ated the scientist above the philosopher or the philosopher above 
the scientist according to which kind of knowledge they could 
account for. 

When it occurs to one that knowledge is after all homogeneous 
and if it is knowledge it will stay knowledge no matter what the 
end for which it is sought, one begins to seek those characters by 
which it is marked in all fields. He soon discovers that this very 
procedure marks him as a scientist. For he is formulating 
hypotheses as scientific as any chemist’s and as speculative. He 
realizes that he too is interpreting signs. 

(3) He realizes that because he elected to study the certainty 
of knowledge—if that be his interest—his knowledge is no more 
(or less) certain than that of men who elected to study molecular 
physics or histology or astronomy; that if it be certain, it will 
be so for exactly the same reason, namely that it has stood every 


290 University of California Publications in Philosophy. (T°l. 2 

test he can devise to try it by. He realizes that all his tests, non¬ 
contradiction, apagogic-proof, coherence in a significant whole, 
and the like, are themselves signs whose meaning must be elicited 
in exactly the same way as the meaning of the sign which they 
are trying to interpret. He realizes that all these efforts are 
attempts to satisfy that very human and hence divine instinct 
of curiosity. At any moment his philosophic interpretations of 
the world as a whole may have to he rejected in favor of a more 
sturdy one, just as the scientist’s interpretation of the world in 
part—if this be a distinction between scientist and philosopher— 
needs constant revision or increasing substantiation. Philosophy 
because of its very claim to be fundamental—not in spite of it— 
ought to proceed more cautiously and deliberately than the 
special sciences. 


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